d really occur, what the solid, tangible fact of the occasion would
be, required no effort to describe. He should merely draw a great
easy-chair before the grate. Then some one would be picked up and
turned about before the fire until thoroughly warmed and with full
circulation of the blood again. She should be simply, but
scientifically, toasted:

"I'd hold you thus before the brand,
To catch caloric blisses,
And you should be my muffin and
I'd butter you with kisses."

She responded that the gift of doggerel was not one to be desired, and,
furthermore, that she was not a muffin, nor anything in the culinary
way.

All of which, of course, served but as provocation to further
flippancy, and, for days later, the lady was referred to as his own
sweetest soda biscuit, his bun, his precious fruit-cake, and so on,
until a bakery's terms were so exhausted. All this was, no doubt,
silliness.

The woman, in her way, was not less inexcusable than the man. She was
as much in love as he, and the strictly personal equation was as strong
within her. She would watch him when they were at lunch together, and
if her gaze was not so bold and feeding as was his, it was at heart as
earnest.

She wanted to do something, because of the passionately loving mood
within her. She wanted to "hurt" him just a little, and one day
occurred an odd thing.

They were chatting across a little table in a restaurant almost vacant
save for them, and he had made some grotesque sweetheart comment which
had pleased her fancy, lovingly alert, and she suddenly straightened in
her seat and looked at him with eyes which were becoming dewy, but said
never a word.

She looked all about the room in one swift, comprehensive glance, and
then, leaning over, with her small right hand she smote him hardly upon
the cheek. There was no occasion for such demonstration. It was but
the outpouring, the sweet, barbaric fancy of the woman, in line with
the man's grotesquerie, and not one whit less affectionate. And he,
thus smitten, made no remonstrance nor defense, further than to refer
incidentally to his slender sweet assailant as "a burly ruffian."

That evening, at her home, he suddenly, just before leaving, picked up
the woman, as if she were a baby, and threatened to carry her away with
him. She did not appear alarmed, at least to the extent of hysteria,
though she struggled feebly, and said that somebody was a big, brutal
gorilla, and tha