"Do you know," she said, "that you have taken me forcibly away from an
exceedingly nice man?"

"I don't care."

"Oh--but might I not at least have been consulted?"

"Didn't you want to come?" he asked, stopping short. There was something
overbearing in his voice and his straight, unwavering gaze.

She didn't know how to take it, how to meet it. Voice and manner
required some proper response which seemed to be beyond her experience.

She did not answer; but a slight pressure of her bare arm set him in
motion again.

The phenomenon interested her; to see what control over this abrupt
young man she really had she ventured a very slight retrograde
arm-pressure, then a delicate touch to right, to left, and forward once
more. It was most interesting; he backed up, guided right and left, and
started forward or halted under perfect control. What had she been
afraid of in him? She ventured to glance around, and, encountering a
warmly personal interest in his gaze, instantly assumed that cold,
blank, virginal mask which the majority of young girls discard at her
age.

However, her long-checked growth in the arts of womanhood had already
recommenced. She had been growing fast, feverishly, and was just now
passing that period where the desire for masculine admiration innocently
rules all else, but where the discovery of it chills and constrains.