ian stays.

"I suppose," said she, "you came to see whether I mightn't be having the
time of my life sitting here with Rookie by the fire."

"I did," he frankly owned. "Mother said you'd gone to New York. So she
went on."

"Now what the dickens for? Haven't I a perfect right to go to New York
without notice?"

"Why," said Dick, "you'd disappeared. You'd gone away from here, and you
were lost, virtually lost. You weren't anywhere."

"If she thought I was in New York, why didn't that settle it? What did
she have to go trailing on after me for?"

"Because," said Dick, "we didn't know. She wanted to telephone. I
wouldn't let her. I couldn't have the Seaburys started up. I couldn't
have you get into the papers."

"Into the papers!" said Nan. "Heavens! I suppose if I'm not in at curfew
I'm to be arrested."

"I let her go," repeated Dick. "But I knew as well as I wanted to you'd
doubled back here and you were with him."

"Then, for God's sake," said Nan, in a conversational tone, knowing the
adjuration would be bitter to him, "if I wanted to be with him, as you
put it--I'm glad I ain't a poet--why didn't you let me?"

"Because," said Dick promptly, "it's indecent."

She had no difficulty in facing him now. It was a cheap means of
subjugating, but, being an advantage, she would not forego it. And,
indeed, she was too angry.

"Dick," she said, "you're a sickening little whelp. More than that,
you're a hypocrite. You write yards and yards of your free verse to tell
us how bold and brave you are and how generally go-as-you-please we've
got to be if we're going to play big Injun, and then you tell me it's
indecent to sit here with Rookie, of all people in the world. My God!
Rookie!"

Again she had invoked her Maker because Dick would shiver at the
impropriety. "No violence," she thought satirically, remembering he was
himself the instigator of violence in verse. But Dick was sorry. He had
not chosen his word. It had lain in his angry mind and leaped to be
used. It could not be taken back.

"You can't deny," said he, "you are perfectly happy here with him. Or
you were a minute ago before I came."

"No," said Nan, "I don't deny it. Is that indecent?"

Now she had the whip hand, for he was not merely angry: he was plainly
suffering. The boyish look had subtly taken possession of his face. This
was the Dick she had loved always, next to Rookie. But his following
words, honest as they were, lost him his advantage of