urged, "like
two friends. Aren't we?"

"We are going to be what we are going to be," said I. "We'll have to
take life as it comes."

That clumsy reminder set her to thinking, stirred her vague uneasiness
in those strange circumstances to active alarm. For presently she
said, in a tone that was not quite so matter-of-course as she would
have liked to make it: "We'll go now to my uncle Frank's. He's a
brother of my father. I always used to like him best--and still do.
But he married a woman mamma thought--queer--and they hadn't much--and
he lives away up on the West Side--One Hundred and Twenty-seventh
Street."

"The wise plan, the only wise plan," said I, not so calm as she must
have thought me, "is to go to my partner's house and send out for a
minister."

"Not to-night," she replied, nervously. "Take me to uncle Frank's, and
to-morrow we can discuss what to do and how to do it."

"To-night," I persisted. "We must be married to-night. No more
uncertainty and indecision and weakness. Let us begin bravely, Anita!"

"To-morrow," she said. "But not to-night. I must think it over."

"To-night," I repeated. "To-morrow will be full of its own problems.
This is to-night's."

She shook her head, and I saw that the struggle between us had
begun--the struggle against her timidity and conventionality. "No, not
to-night." This in her tone for finality.

To have argued with any woman in such circumstances would have been
dangerous; to have argued with her would have been fatal. To reason
with a woman is to flatter her into suspecting you of weakness and
herself of strength. I told the chauffeur to turn about and go slowly
uptown. She settled back into her corner of the brougham. Neither of
us spoke until we were passing Clairmont. Then she started out of her
secure confidence in my obedience, and exclaimed: "This is not the
way!" And her voice had in it the hasty call-to-arms.

"No," I replied, determined to push the panic into a rout. "As I told
you, our future shall be settled to-night." That in _my_ tone for
finality.

A pause, then: "It _has_ been settled," she said, like a child that
feels, yet denies, its impotence as it struggles in the compelling
arms of its father. "I thought until a few minutes ago that I really
intended to marry you. Now I see that I didn't."

"Another reason why we're not going to your uncle's," said I.

She leaned forward so that I could see her face. "I cannot marry you,"
she said. "I