ll love-making, even
the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and
rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is
nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the
articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit
of _nuances_ give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even
with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the
drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the
bungler! And Mr. Ashly Crane was far from being an artist in anything.

By this time Adelle had become aware that she was being made love to. It
filled her with a variety of emotions not clearly defined. First of all,
there was something of the woman's natural complacency in her first
capture, more vivid than when the other girls had dubbed Mr. Crane her
"beau." This was a _bona fide_ illustration of what all the girls talked
about most of the time and the novels were full of from cover to
cover--love-making! And next was a feeling akin to repugnance. Mr. Crane
was not aged--barely forty-two--and he was good-looking enough and quite
the man. But to Adelle he had always been, if not exactly a parent, at
least an older brother or uncle,--in some category of relationship other
than that of young love. That he should thus hastily be professing
ardent sentiments towards her seemed a trifle improper. Beneath these
superficial feelings there were, of course, some deeper ones;--for
instance, a slight sense of humor in his clumsy management and a feeling
of gratification that at last the unknown had arrived. And a something
else not wholly unpleasant in her own small person....

Crane was mumbling something about his loneliness and her unprotected
condition. Adelle was not aware that she was to be pitied because of
lack of protection, but she liked to be the object of sympathy.
Gradually she relaxed, and permitted him to insert his arm between her
and the cushion, which he seemed so ridiculously anxious to do. At once
he drew her slight form towards him. He was saying,--

"Dearest! Can you--will you--"

And she demanded point-blank,--

"What?"

"Love me!" the man breathed very close to her.

"I don't know," she replied, struggling to regain her refuge in the
corner from which his embrace had dragged her.

And just here Ashly Crane committed an irretrievable blunder, due to
those imperfections of nature and technique which have b