lowering expression that I had learned to dread in him.

"What fool nonsense is this?" he demanded. "What in the world
possessed you, Kit, to put yourself in such an equivocal
position? Unless"--he stopped and turned a little white--"unless
you are going to marry Jim."

I am sorry for Max. He is such a nice boy, and good looking, too,
if only he were not so fierce, and did not want to make love to
me. No matter what I do, Max always disapproves of it. I have
always had a deeply rooted conviction that if I should ever in a
weak moment marry Max, he would disapprove of that, too, before I
had done it very long.

"Are you?" he demanded, narrowing his eyes--a sign of unusually
bad humor.

"Am I what?"

"Going to marry him?"

"If you mean Jim," I said with dignity, "I haven't made up my
mind yet. Besides, he hasn't asked me."

Aunt Selina had been talking Woman's Suffrage in front of the
fireplace, but now she turned to me.

"Is this the vase Cousin Jane Whitcomb sent you as a wedding
present?" she demanded, indicating a hideous urn-shaped affair on
the mantel. It came to me as an inspiration that Jim had once