and in the hidden springs of her
nature that which she had always longed for happened, and became, and
was. And one night she said to the moon: "I know it isn't proper for me
to be so attentive to him, and I know everybody is talking about it,
but--" and she rested her beautiful brown chin on her shapely, strong,
brown hands, and a tear like a diamond stood in each of her unbelievably
blue eyes, and she looked at the moon, and said: "But it's Harry Masters
or--_bust_!"

Mr. Bob Blagdon, the rich widower, had been content to play a waiting
game; for he knew very well that beneath her good-nature little Miss
Blythe had a proud temper and was to be won rather by the man who should
make himself indispensable to her than by him who should be forever
pestering her with speaking and pleading his cause. She is an honest
girl, he told himself, and without thinking of consequences she is
always putting herself under obligations to me. Let her ride down
lover's lane with young Blank or young Dash, she will not be able to
forget that she is on my favorite mare. In his soul he felt a certain
proprietorship in little Miss Blythe; but to this his ruddy,
dark-mustached face and slow-moving eyes were a screen.

Mr. Blagdon had always gone after what he wanted in a kind of slow,
indifferent way that begot confidence in himself and in the beholder;
and (in the case of Miss Blythe) a kind of panic in the object sought.
She liked him because she was used to him, and because he could and
would talk sense upon subjects which interested her. But she was afraid
of him because she knew that he expected her to marry him some day, and
because she knew that other people, including her own family, expected
this of her. Sometimes she felt ready to take unto herself all the
horses and country places and automobiles and yachts, and in a life
lived regardless of expense to bury and forget her better self. But more
often, like a fly caught in a spider's web, she wished by one desperate
effort (even should it cost her a wing, to carry out the figure) to free
herself once and forever from the entanglement.

It was pleasant enough in the web. The strands were soft and silky;
they held rather by persuasion than by force. And had it not been for
the spider she could have lived out her life in the web without any very
desperate regrets. But it was never quite possible to forget the spider;
and that in his own time he would approach slowly and deliberately