ursuit. Leonore was walking rapidly, but it did not take
Peter many seconds to come up with her.

"Your father says you are not to go out."

"I can't help it, since I am out," said Leonore, sensibly.

"But you should come back at once."

"I don't care to," said Leonore.

"Aren't you going to obey him?"

"He never would have cared if you hadn't interfered. It's your orders,
not his. So I intend to have my walk."

"You are to come back," said Peter.

Leonore stopped and faced him. "This is getting interesting," she
thought. "We'll see who can be the most obstinate." Aloud she said, "Who
says so?"

"I do."

"And I say I shan't."

Peter felt his helplessness. "Please come back."

Leonore laughed internally. "I don't choose to."

"Then I shall have to make you."

"How?" asked Leonore.

That was a conundrum, indeed. If it had been a knotty law point, Peter
would have been less nonplussed by it.

Leonore felt her advantage, and used it shamefully. She knew that Peter
was helpless, and she said, "How?" again, laughing at him.

Peter groped blindly. "I shall make you," he said again, for lack of
anything better.

"Perhaps," said Leonore, helping him out, though with a most insulting
laugh in her voice and face, "you will get a string and lead me?"

Peter looked the picture of helplessness.

"Or you might run over to the Goelets', and borrow their baby's
perambulator," continued that segment of the Spanish Inquisition. If
ever an irritating, aggravating, crazing, exasperating, provoking
fretting enraging, "I dare you," was uttered, it was in Leonore's manner
as she said this.

Peter looked about hopelessly.

"Please hurry up and say how," Leonore continued, "for I want to get
down to the cliff walk. It's very wet here on the grass. Perhaps you
will carry me back? You evidently think me a baby in arms." "He's such
fun to tease," was her thought, "and you can say just what you please
without being afraid of his doing anything ungentlemanly." Many a woman
dares to torture a man for just the same reason.

She was quite right as to Peter. He had recognized that he was
powerless; that he could not use force. He looked the picture of utter
indecision. But as Leonore spoke, a sudden change came over his face and
figure. "Leonore had said it was wet on the grass! Leonore would wet her
feet! Leonore would take cold! Leonore would have pneumonia! Leonore
would die!" It was a shameful chain of argument for a li