y were gently
contemplative. She spoke musingly.

"In things like that you aren't at all what I thought you
were--about our social customs, I mean. Yet fundamentally, I think
you are."

"That I am what?"

"What I thought you were."

He waited, palpably waited, but Arlee continued to peel a tangerine
with absorption, and the question had to come from him. He put it
with an air of indolent amusement, yet she felt the intent interest
in leash.

"And what did you think I was like, _chere petite mademoiselle_?"

"Very handsome for one thing, Monsieur! You see, I owe you a
compliment for calling me such a pretty name as this!" With a
mischievous smile she touched the roses nodding in her girdle. "And
very autocratic for another, with a very bad temper. If you can't
get your way you would be shockingly disagreeable!"

"But I always get my way," he assured her lazily, his teeth showing
under his small, black mustache.

"I believe you do!" Ingenuous admiration, simple and sustained, was
in the look she gave him. Her hands were not half so icy now, nor
her nerves so tense. She felt strangely surer of herself; the actual
presence of the danger calmed her. She must make good with this, she
thought simply, in strenuous American.

"And yet," she went on thoughtfully, the pretty picture of
fascinated absorption in this most feminine topic--the dissection of
a young man--"yet, you are chivalrous. And I think that is the
quality we American girls admire most of all."

"The quality--of indulgence?" he questioned, with a half-railing
air.

"The quality--of gentleness."

"But is there not another quality which you American girls would
admire more than that gentleness--if you ever had the chance in your
lives to see it? The quality of dominance? The courage of the man
who dares what he desires, and who takes what he wills? Is not
that----"

"Ah, yes, we love strong men," Arlee flung into the speech that was
bearing him on like a tide, "but we don't think them strong unless
they are strong enough to fight themselves. They may take what they
will--but they mustn't crush it.... There is a gentleness in great
strength--I can't explain what I mean----"

"Ah, I see, I see." He smiled subtly. "I am not to crush you, little
Rose of Desire," he said softly.

She met the sly significance of his gaze with a look of frank,
unfaltering candor. "Of course not," she said stoutly. "When
you--you make me afraid of you, you make me lik