umes of the chloroform disappeared and he
began to realise what had been done to him, he was becoming madder and
madder.

She recognised the wrath in his face as he swung on his heel and came
toward her.

"It is your own fault!" she said, resolutely, "for playing a silly trick
like----" But she observed his advance very dubiously, straightening up
to her full slender height to confront him, but not rising to her feet.
Her knees were still very shaky.

He halted close in front of her. Something in the interrogative yet
fearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignant
eloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him even
mentally mute, his lips parted stupidly.

She said: "According to the old order of things a well-bred man would ask
my pardon. But a decently-bred man, in the first place, wouldn't have
done such a thing to me. So your apology would only be a paradox----"

"What!" he exclaimed, stung into protest. "Am I to understand that after
netting me and chloroforming me and nearly drowning me----"

"My mistake was perfectly natural. Do you suppose that I would even dream
of trailing _you_ as you really are?"

He gazed at her bewildered; passed his unsteady hand over his
countenance, then sat down abruptly beside her on the mossy log and
buried his head in his hands.

She looked at him haughtily, sitting up very straight; he continued
beside her in silence, face in his hands as though overwhelmed. Nothing
was said for several minutes--until the clear disdain of her gaze
changed, imperceptibly; and the rigidity of her spinal column relaxed.

"I am very sorry this has happened," she said. There was, however, no
sympathy in her tone. He made no movement to speak.

"I am sorry," she repeated after a moment. "It is hard to suffer
humiliation."

"Yes," he said, "it is."

"But you deserved it."

"How? I didn't fashion my face and figure."

She mistook him: "_Somebody_ did."

"Yes; my parents."

"What!"

"Oh, I don't mean that silly make-up," he said, raising his head.

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I mean my own face and figure. What you did to me--your netting me,
doping me, and all that wasn't a patch on what you said afterward."

"What do you mean? What did I say?"

"You asked me if I supposed that you would dream of netting a man with a
face and f-figure like----"

"Mr. Langdon!"

"Didn't you?"

"I--you--we----"

"You did! And can any man suffer any humilia