humiliate me."

"I didn't say that you are easy to know----"

"You meant it!" she insisted reproachfully. "You think so, too--just
because I let myself be picked up--by a perfectly strange man----"

"Good heavens, Palla--" he began nervously; but caught the glimmer in
her lowered eyes--saw her child's mouth tremulous with mirth
controlled.

"Oh, Jim!" she said, still laughing, "do you think I care how we met?
How absurd of you to let me torment you. You're altogether too boyish,
too self-conscious. You're loaded down with all the silly traditions
which I've thrown away. I don't care how we met. I'm glad we know each
other."

She opened a silver box on a little table at her elbow, chose a
cigarette, lighted it, and offered it to him.

"I rather like the taste of them now," she remarked, making room for
him on the sofa beside her.

When he was seated, she reached up to a jar of flowers on the piano,
selected a white carnation, broke it short, and then drew the stem
through his lapel, patting the blossom daintily into a pom-pon.

"Now," she said gaily, "if you'll let me, I'll straighten your tie.
Shall I?"

He turned toward her; she accomplished that deftly, then glanced
across at the clock.

"We've only half an hour longer to ourselves," she exclaimed, with
that unconscious candour which always thrilled him. Then, turning to
him, she said laughingly: "Does it really matter how two people meet
when time races with us like that?"

"And do you realise," he said in a low, tense voice, "that since I met
you every racing minute has been sweeping me headlong toward you?"

She was so totally unprepared for the deeper emotion in his voice and
bearing--so utterly surprised--that she merely gazed at him.

"Haven't you been aware of it, Palla?" he said, looking her in the
eyes.

"Jim!" she protested, "you are disconcerting! You never before have
taken such a tone toward me."

She rose, walked over to the clock, examined it minutely for a few
moments. Then she turned, cast a swift, perplexed glance at him, and
came slowly back to resume her place on the sofa.

"Men should be very, very careful what they say to me." As she
lifted her eyes he saw them beginning to glimmer again with that
irresponsible humour he knew so well.

"Be careful," she said, her brown gaze gay with warning; "--I'm
godless and quite lawless, and I'm a very dangerous companion for any
well-behaved and orthodox young man who ventures to tell