about it! Will you give me another match?"

He held one for her, his eyebrows cocked at a comical angle, open
derision in the odd eyes beneath them. Then, her cigarette kindled, he
sprang up in his abrupt fashion.

"I'm going. Thanks for putting up with me for so long. I had to come and
see you, Juliette. You are one of the very few capable of appreciating me
at my full value."

"I hope you will come again," she said.

He bowed low over her hand. "If I can ever serve you in any way," he
said, "I hope you will give me the privilege. Farewell, most estimable
Romeo! You may yet live to greet me as a friend."

He was gone with the words with the suddenness of a monkey swinging off a
bough, leaving behind him a silence so marked that the fall of an unripe
apple from the tree immediately above them caused Columbus to start and
jump from his perch to investigate.

Then Juliet, very quiet of mien and level of brow, got up and went to
Dick who had risen at the departure of the visitor. She put her hand
through his arm and held it closely.

"You are not to be unkind to my friends, Richard," she said. "It is the
one thing I can't allow."

He looked at her with some sternness, but his free hand closed at once
upon hers. "I hate to think of you on terms of intimacy with that