flew its flag in both their faces.

"You're such a wonder!" he said.

She smiled. "So are y-you." It was the first time she had ever stammered
in her life.

When she came back into the sitting-room, she found Portia inclined to
be severe.

"Did you ask him to come again?" she wanted to know.

Rose smiled. "I never thought of it," she said.

"Perhaps it's just as well," said Portia. "Did you have anything at all
to say to him before we came home, or were you like that all the while?
How long ago did he come?"

"I don't know," said Rose behind a very real yawn. "I was asleep on the
couch when he came in. That's why I was dressed like this." And then she
said she was hungry.

There wasn't, on the whole, a happier person in the world at that
moment.

Because Rodney Aldrich, pounding along at five miles an hour, in a
direction left to chance, was not happy. Or, if he was, he didn't know
it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose
had done. He felt that he must think--felt that he had never stood in
such dire need of cool level consideration as at this moment: