ht give, and no one could hear or see what happened to
her except this smiling man and his well-trained servant. For all
outside this was an empty house.

She steadied herself, the more readily because something in the narrow
eyes twinkling into hers said that Jim Logan had expected her to
scream and make a scene. Never until now had she imagined it possible
to be afraid of him. In the park, when he had stopped his car to
follow and speak to her, she had been a little startled, a good deal
annoyed. Then, when Ursus had opportunely arrived to frighten him
away as easily as the _Spider_ frightened _Miss Muffet_, she had been
impishly amused.

In Toys at Peter Rolls's she had been vexed, irritated, but never
hotly angry. The young man's persistence had not seemed serious enough
to call "persecution." She had rather enjoyed "shunting" him off upon
Lily Leavitt, and thwarting him through Cupid and Earl Usher. It had
never occurred to her that behind the unfailing smile and the
twinkling gray eyes the brutal ferocity of the animal might lurk.

She had thought that he had forgotten her long ago and turned his
attentions elsewhere. What girl, unless silly and Victorian, would be
afraid of a dude who lived for the sleekness of his hair and the
spick-and-spanness of his clothes? Yet now Win was afraid, and she did
not think it was because she had suddenly become silly or Victorian.
This aquiline-faced young man with the prominent jaw was looking at
her as the primitive brute looks at the prey under his paws, and if he
smiled and twinkled, it was but as the primitive brute might purr.

Winifred thought of this, and she thought, too, that when the prey had
presence of mind to feign sleep or death the brute was said not to
kill, after all.

She did not put her hand into the hand that Logan held out, but
neither did she turn to run from him. "This is quite a surprise," she
remarked quietly.

"A pleasant surprise, I hope," he suggested.

"A sort of practical joke, I suppose," the girl said.

"Well, yes, that's just what it is," Logan smiled, evidently wondering
at her calmness and not sure whether to take it as a good or bad omen.
"It seemed to be the only way I could get you to accept any
invitation of mine."

"Rather a high-handed way!" said Win, shrugging her shoulders.
"Still--here I am. This seems to be a nice house. Is it yours?"

"It's my father's. We're all supposed to be somewhere else for the
summer. But I run i