age."

"You are thirty."

"_Voila!_ That's exactly what I said. A woman of thirty is as old as a
man of forty. As it is, you are a child, and I a middle-aged person."

Cleeve watched her for a moment. Then he said, slowly: "I'd give up
those intervening years to be forty today."

"Then you'd be an awful idiot!"

"I'd not be an idiot at all. You treat me like a child."

"You are one--to me."

"I'm not a child."

"Very well--you are old. You are a padded veteran of sixty--like Mr.
Blake. Do you like that better?"

He was silent, and after a pause they started slowly down the hill.

Two days passed since she had told him that Mrs. Fraser was in love
with him. They had been much together, but never alone until now, and
she knew that he was furious with himself for letting the minutes slip
unmarked by. Suddenly he burst out: "Will you wear that gray frock you
wore the first night, to-night? And the low diamond thing in your
hair?"

"Why?"

"Because--I want to see you again as I saw you then. I--I have lost my
bearings. I can't remember how you looked, and I--want----"

"I looked like a well-preserved, middle-aged lady. Please don't begin
to think me young, Teddy."

Under her broad hat brim her eyes gleamed maliciously.

"You _are_ young! I was an idiotic----"

She raised her head.

"Oh, don't! Don't fall in love with me; it would bore us both to
death; be my nice adopted son."

"Dear Lady Harden," he returned, flushing, "I assure you that I have
not the slightest idea of falling in love with you."

"Thank Heaven! I adore boys, but a boy in love is really _too_
appalling."

He caught her hand and looked down at her, something suddenly
dominating in his eyes.

"That is nonsense," he said, shortly. "I am young, but I am not a
child, and if I fell in love with you----"

"Well?"

"It would not be as a child loves. That is all."

He released her hand, and they walked on in silence.

* * * * *

The extraordinary delight that most charming women take in playing
with fire had ever been Dagny Harden's, for the reason that she had
never, in all her experiences, been in the slightest danger of burning
her delicate fingers. Purely cerebral flirt that she was, her
unawakened heart dozed placidly in the shadow of her husband's strong
affection for her.

Once or twice when the suffering she inflicted was plainly written on
the face of her victim, her mind shrank fastidiou