to be a poet."
He fumbled for her hand and kissed it a little sheepishly.

They went in. "You're a nice boy, Harry," she said. There was something
in his charming simplicity and muscular strength that reminded her
of,--but she refused to let the name enter her mind.

"I could have broken that chap like a dry twig, too, easy. Who does he
think he is?" He would have pawned his life at that moment for the
taste of her lips.

She stood at the bottom of the stairs and held out her hand. "Good
night, old boy," she said.

And he took it and hurt it. "Good night, Joany," he answered.

That pet name hurt her more than his eager grasp. It was Marty's own
word--Marty, who--who--

She threw up her head and stamped her foot, and slammed the door of her
thoughts. "Who cares?" she said to herself, challenging life and fate.
"Come on. Make things move."

She saw Palgrave standing alone in the library looking at the sea. "You
might be Canute," she said lightly.

His face was curiously white. "I'm off in the morning," he said. "We
may as well say good-by now."

"Good-by, then," she answered.

"I can't stay in this cursed place and let you play the fool with me."

"Why should you?"

"There'll be Hosack and the others as well as your new pet."

"That's true."

He caught her suddenly by the arms. "Damn you," he said. "I wish to God
I'd never seen you."

She laughed. "Cave man stuff, eh?"

He let her go. She had the most perfect way of reducing him to ridicule.

"I love you," he said. "I love you. Aren't you going to try, even to
try, to love me back?"

"No."

"Not ever?"

"Never." She went up to him and stood straight and slim and bewitching,
eye to eye. "If you want me to love you, make me. Work for it, move
Heaven and earth. You can't leave it to me. I don't want to love you.
I'm perfectly happy as I am. If you want me, win me, carry me off my
feet and then you shall see what it is to be loved. It's entirely up to
you, understand that. I shall fight against it tooth and nail, but I
give you leave to do your best. Do you accept the challenge?"

"Yes," he said, and his face cleared, and his eyes blazed.

V

At the moment when the Nice Boy, as brown as the proverbial berry, was
playing a round of golf with Joan within sound of the sea, Howard
Oldershaw, his cousin, drove up to the little house in East Sixty-fifth
Street to see Martin.

He, too, had caught the sun, and his round fat face was rounder an