ills with his precious squadron, that's
all."

She was looking about her, preoccupied. "Where are your cigarettes,
Stephen? Oh, I see. Don't try to move--don't be silly."

She leaned over the desk, her fresh young face close to his, and reached
for the cigarettes. The clean-cut head, the sweetness of her youth and
femininity, boyish in its allure, were very attractive to him--more so,
perhaps, because of his isolation from the atmosphere of women.

"It's all very well, Marion, your coming here--and it's very sweet of
you, and I enjoy it immensely," he said: "but it's a deuced imprudent
thing for you to do, and I feel bound to say so for your sake every time
you come."

She leaned back in her chair and coolly blew a wreath of smoke at him.

"All right," he said, unconvinced.

"Certainly it's all right. I've done what suited me all my life. This
suits me."

"It suits me, too," he said, "only I wish you'd tell your mother before
somebody around this neighbourhood informs her first."

"Let 'em. You'll be out by that time. Do you think I'm going to tell my
mother now and have her stop it?"

"Oh, Marion, you know perfectly well that it won't do for a girl to
ignore first principles. I'm horribly afraid somebody will talk about
you."

"What would you do, then?"

"I?" he asked, disturbed. "What could I do?"

"Why, I suppose," she said slowly, "you'd have to marry me."

"Then," he rejoined with a laugh, "I should think you'd be scared into
prudence by the prospect."

"I am not easily--scared," she said, looking down.

"Not at that prospect?" he said jestingly.

She looked up at him; and he remembered afterward the poise of her small
head, and the slow, clear colour mounting; remembered that it conveyed
to him, somehow, a hint of courage and sincerity.

"I am not frightened," she said gravely.

Gravity fell upon him, too. In this young girl's eyes there was no
evasion. For a long while he had felt vaguely that matters were not
perfectly balanced between them. At moments, even, he had felt an
indefinable uneasiness in her presence. The situation troubled him, too;
and though he had known her from childhood and had long ago learned
to discount her vagaries of informality, her manners sans facon, her
careless ignoring of convention, and the unembarrassed terms of her
speech, his common-sense could not countenance this defiance of social
usage, sure to involve even such a privileged girl as she in some
unpleas