nd because, too, you
are a trifle afraid of me!" He laughed. "It would have an even better
effect, though, if you wouldn't take it quite so seriously; couldn't
you contrive to get a little pleasure out of it on your own account?--I
mean the looking so handsome."

She gave him the paper, and went across to her work-table. "I am
delighted to look handsome," she said.

"No, you're not. It was probably easier for you to dress as you used
to--plainly; more in accordance with your feelings, women like to be in
accordance. When they're completely satisfied, or very unhappy, they
brush their hair straight back from their faces. Well, yours curls
enough now!"

"The truth is, Madge, you're too yielding," he resumed after a short
silence. "I take advantage of it, of course--I always shall; but you
would get on a great deal better yourself, you might even have had more
influence over me (if you care about that), if you had been, if you were
now, a little less--patient."

"I suppose there's no use in my repeating that I'm not patient at all,"
answered Margaret. She was taking some balls of silk from the drawer.

"You want me to think it's self-control. Well, perhaps it is. But then,
you know, unbroken self-control--"

"Would you mind it if I should ask you not to discuss it--my
self-control?" Her hands were beginning to tremble.

"Put your hands in your pocket if you don't want me to see them," said
Lanse, laughing; "they always betray you--even when your voice is
steady. What a temper you've got--though you do curb it so tightly! At
least you're infinitely better off than you would have been if you had
happened to care for me. That's been the enormous blessing of your
life--your not caring; just supposing you _had_ cared! You ought to be
very thankful; and you ought to reckon up your blessings every now and
then, for fear of forgetting some of them; we ought all to do that, I
think."

He said this with great gravity. Not that he felt in the least grave;
but it was a way Lanse had of amusing himself, once in a while,--to make
remarks of this sort with a very solemn face.

He looked at her for a moment or two longer as she sat with her eyes
bent upon her knitting. "You're in the right chair," he said at length,
"but you're sitting too straight. Won't you please take that footstool,
put your feet on it, and then lean back more? You long lithe women look
better that way."

She did not move.

"Come," he said, "you're furi