n such a mood that if the times were different and the age more
romantic, I would pick you up and put you on my champing steed and
carry you off to my castle."

He laughed, and for the moment she was thrilled by his masterfulness.
"But, alas, my steed is a taxi--the age is prosaic--and you--I'm afraid
of you, Contrary Mary."

They were on the Speedway now, faintly illumined, showing a row of
waving willow trees, spectrally outlined against a background of gray
water.

"I'm afraid of you. I have always been. Even when you were only ten
and I was fifteen. I would shake in my shoes when you looked at me,
Mary; you were the only one then--you are the only one--now."

Her hand lay on the outside of the rug. He put his own over it.

"Ever since you said to-night that you didn't care--there's been
something singing--in my brain, and it has said, 'make her care, make
her care.' And I'm going to do it. I'm not going to trouble you or
worry you with it--and I'm going to take my chances with the rest. But
in the end I'm going to--win."

"There aren't any others."

"If there aren't there will be. You've kept yourself protected so far
by that little independent manner of yours, which scares men off. But
some day a man will come who won't be scared--and then it will be a
fight to the finish between him--and me."

"Oh, Porter, I don't want to think of marrying--not for ten million
years."

"And yet," he said prophetically, "if to-morrow you should meet some
man who could make you think he was the Only One, you'd marry him in
the face of all the world."

"No man of that kind will ever come."

"What kind?"

"That will make me willing to lose the world."

The rain was beating against the windows of the cab.

"Porter, please. We must go home."

"Not unless you'll promise to let me prove it--to let me show that I'm
a man--not a--boy."

"You're the best friend I've ever had. I wish you wouldn't insist on
being something else."

"But I do insist----"

"And I insist upon going home. Be good and take me."

It was said with decision, and he gave the order to the driver. And so
they whirled at last up the avenue of the Presidents and along the
edges of the Park, and arrived at the foot of the terrace of the big
house.

There was a light in the tower window.

"That fellow is up yet," Porter said. He had an umbrella over her, and
was shielding her as best he could from the rain. "I don't like to
think o