to Betty?"

"I could hardly help it."

"Then you heard me say that about being out of temper at not having my
own way this morning--when I--really didn't want my own way." Her eyes
were on Betty's patient little head.

"Do you expect me to believe that?" he asked, smiling.

"Did I seem to want it?"

"Very decidedly."

"Yet--if you had let me have it--do you know how I should have felt
toward you?"

"I know how I should have felt toward myself."

"How would you?" she asked, curiously.

He shook his head. "I believe I'd better not try to explain that."

"Why not?"

"Dangerous ground."

"I don't understand."

"When you admit," he said, "that when you seem to want your own way,
you really don't want it----"

"That was just in this instance," she interrupted, quickly.

"Such a thing never happened before?"

"Certainly not."

"How about the time you lost your slipper off under the table the
night we were dining at the Dennisons' and you forbade me to get it?
Then when you thought I hadn't----"

"Oh--that was a silly thing--don't mention it. This was different. You
knew the horses weren't safe for me to drive----"

"You admit that?"

"For the sake of the argument, yes. But since you thought they weren't
safe, it would have been a weak thing for you to have given in to me."

"Thank you--that's precisely the way I felt."

"But it doesn't prevent--it wouldn't prevent my wanting my own
way--always--about everything----"

"When?"

She turned a brilliant color under the lantern rays.

He bent forward. "Are you warning me?"

"I'm trying to let you know the sort of person I am."

"Well," he said, leaning back again, and studying her with attention,
noting the picture she unconsciously made in her blue robe, with the
brown braids hanging over her shoulders, "I've been observing you with
somewhat close scrutiny for about three years now, and it occurs to me
that I'm fairly conversant with your moods and tenses. Perhaps I ought
to be warned, but--I'm not."

"I've always been told that sort of thing grows upon one," she
observed.

"What sort of thing? Having one's own way?"

She nodded.

"You're right there," he agreed. "I've been wanting mine, more or less
strenuously, for three years."

"Elaine Dennison," she observed--somewhat irrelevantly, it might
seem--"is the dearest, most amiable girl. She loves to make people
happy."

"Yes--and doesn't succeed. And you--don't want to make them
happy