"Your arraignment of me when half the men in town have been trying to
marry you all winter. You've made a reputation for yourself, too,
Geraldine."

"As what?" she asked angrily.

"A head-twister."

"Do you mean a flirt?"

"Oh, Lord! Only the French use that term now. But that's the idea,
Geraldine. You are a born one. I fell for the first smile you let loose
on me."

"You seem to have been a sort of general Humpty Dumpty for falls all
your life, Duane," she said with dangerous sweetness.

"Like that immortal, I've had only one which permanently shattered me."

"Which was that, if you please?"

"The fall you took out of me."

"In other words," she said disdainfully, "you are beginning to make love
to me again."

"No.... I _was_ in love with you."

"You were in love with yourself, young man. You are on such excellent
terms with yourself that you sympathise too ardently with any attractive