and humorous, as well as very delightful.

"And the devil, too! But you don't understand. I must go home to my
father," I answered still again.

"You don't understand yourself," returned Nickols. "There are strange
hieroglyphics imprinted on every woman's heart and a man can read only
an unconnected word here and there when he can get his flashlight thrown
into the depths--if he dares adventure into her life at all. I feel that
I take my own life in my hands when I allow you to talk to me as I am
allowing you to-night."

"How do you know that those hieroglyphics might not mean the salvation
of the world if she could spell them out herself, or some great and good
person took a steady lamp and went down into her heart and--"

"It takes a very wicked man to read a woman; good men are blinded by
them and stumble," Nickols assured me as he came over, stood beside me
and ran his long, slender, artist's fingers up and down the keys of the
piano, which evoked a strange, diabolical sort of harmony from them. "I
understand about it all, so please come tell me you'll marry me." This
time his arms almost encircled me, but I slipped between them as he
laughed at me with his adorable pagan charm.

"No, Nickols, that would be an easy--and--and delightful way out, but I
am really frightened down in some queer part of my anatomy that lies
between my breast bone and my spinal column. Something is stirring in my
heart and I'm afraid of it. I've got to get out in a wilderness and
fight with it."