smother one's feelings than to check one's words. By the time it comes
to blows it is like trying to pull up a runaway horse. The first pinch
Philip gave to my arm set my brain on fire. When he threw me heavily
against the cave with a mocking laugh, and sprang after Charles, I
could not have yielded an inch to him to save my life--not to earn
Fortunatus' purse, or three fairy wishes--not to save whatever I most
valued.

What would have induced me? I do not know, but I know that I am very
glad it is not quite so easy to sell one's soul at one bargain as
fairy-tales make out!

My struggle with Philip had given Charles time to escape. Philip could
not find him, and rough as were the words with which he returned to
me, I fancy they cost him some effort of self-control, and they
betrayed to Alice's instinct and mine that he would have been glad to
get out of the extremity to which our tempers had driven matters.

"Look here!" said he in a tone which would have been perfect if we
had been acting a costermonger and his wife. "Are you going to make
Clinton the Prince or not?"

"I am not," said I, nursing my elbow, which was cut by a nail on the
cask. "I am not going to do anything whatever for Mr. Clinton, and I
ought to be cured of working for you."

"You have lost an opening to make peace," said an inner voice. "You've
given the yielding plan a fair trial, and it has failed," said
self-justification--the swiftest pleader I know. "There are some
people, with self-satisfied, arbitrary tempers, upon whom gentleness
is worse than wasted, because it misleads them. They have that remnant
of savage notions which drives them to mistake generosity for
weakness. The only way to convince them is to hit them harder than
they hit you. And it is the kindest plan for everybody concerned."

I am bound to say--though it rather confuses some of my ideas--that
experience has convinced me that this last statement is not without
truth. But I am also bound to say that it was not really applicable to
Philip. He is not as generous as Alice, but I had no good reason to
believe that kindly concession would be wasted on him.

When I had flung my last defiance, Philip replied in violent words of
a kind which girls in our class of life do not (happily!) use, even
in a rage. They were partly drowned by the clatter with which he
dragged his big box across the floor, and filled it with properties of
all kinds, from the Dragon to the foot-light ref