that."

"But--"

"Besides, what would people say?" she countered obstinately. "Oh,
no," she decided; and he felt that from this decision there would
be no appeal; "I couldn't think of interfering with your ... arrangements."

Her eyes held his for a single instant, instinct with mischief,
gleaming with bewildering light from out a face schooled to
gravity. Maitland experienced a sensation of having grasped after
and missed a subtlety of allusion; his wits, keen as they were,
recoiled, baffled by her finesse. And the more he divined that she
was playing with him, as an experienced swordsman might play with
an impertinent novice, the denser his confusion grew.

"But I have no arrangements--" he stammered.

"Don't!" she insisted--as much as to say that he was fabricating
and she knew it! "We must hurry, you know, because.... There, I've
dropped my handkerchief! By the tree, there. Do you mind--?"

"Of course not." He set off swiftly toward the point indicated,
but on reaching it cast about vainly for anything in the nature of
a handkerchief. In the midst of which futile quest a change of
tempo in the motor's impatient drumming surprised him.

Startled, he looked up. Too late: the girl was in the seat, the
car in motion--already some yards from the point at which he had
left it. Dismayed, he strode forward, raising his voice in