"What do you read?"

"There seemed to be indicated characteristics there, the exact opposite of those you possess."

"Tell me?"

"No."

She drew her hand away a trifle angrily: obstinacy opposed to curiosity is as flint to steel. Fingers, trembling a little, began putting on her glove. The look in her eyes could not be truthfully described as softness; all the same it was very becoming.

He was not insensible of her feeling, for the birth of which he was responsible. Just restrained her: put his hand out on to hers. A simple act, but one he performed more gravely than the occasion warranted; said:

"Don't be angry."

Then hesitated; conscious, now he had spoken, that the admonition--by presupposing cause for it--was not likely to improve matters. Felt that he had put a large-sized foot into it.

"Angry!"

The glitter in her eyes, as she repeated his word, warned him that his intuition was correct; made him say:

"Well--annoyed."

"You are so--so provoking!"

"I am sorry----"

"No, you are not! You are not sorry a little bit!"

"Believe me----"

"If you were sorry for your rudeness----"

"Rudeness!"

"Yes!"

She spoke with a certain tone of defiance; her anger blinding her to the fitness of things--he was really but an acquaintance; continued:

"I think so. Tell me, what did you read?"

His silence incensed her more. Tapping her foot impatiently at his manifest reluctance to answer, she went on:

"What does it matter? You say you read the exact opposite of the truth."

"If you insist----"

She was in buckram in a moment; pride stiffened her. Drawing herself up, she interrupted him; spoke with an imperious little gesture:

"Oh, no! I have no right to do that. I merely asked."

Miss Mivvins rose to her feet: a woman's way of terminating an interview. In his sorrow--disappointment--once more he touched her hand restrainingly.

"Please sit down."

The note of pleading sounded in his voice. Then--surely his good angel whispered him which line to strike out--he added:

"Don't go yet. You are right--I was wrong."

CHAPTER VIII

A SOFT GOOD NIGHT

Masters took his stand on that apology and made capital out of it. Miss Mivvins resumed her seat. With all his ignorance of the treatment women expected--out of books--he had acted in strict consonance with the s.e.x's idea of the fitness of things.

To own up to the rightness of the woman you are talking with, and your own wrong, is as oil to machinery. It is an almost infallible way of worming yourself into the woman's good graces; rarely fails. Its lack of truth is compensated for by its success: the Jesuitical theory that the end justifies the means.

"Why I said the exact opposite, was because in your hand there are lines"--he was holding her hand in his now; holding it tightly as if he did not want it to slip away again--"which signify love of admiration--society--entertainment--jewels--riches--luxury--noise-- bustle and excitement."

She listened to the catalogue in silence--save for the eloquence of the lashes of her eyes.

"And if," she queried after a moment, "if I confessed to all that--that you had read correctly--what then?"

He smiled, so certain was he of the falsity of his catalogue: that her character was very different from his delineation.

"At the risk of your again calling me rude," he answered, "I should say you were speaking falsely."

"Why?"

"Because in Nature's library there is a more truthful book to read than that of the hand--the face."

She started; he had commenced the perusal of what he referred to. Her slight blush was hidden; a kindly cloud pa.s.sed over the moon at the moment.

"I have read that face of yours--read it again and again. I read it each time I see you, I read it even when I do not see you; your face is never away from me now."

His voice had grown very soft. Having taken his courage in both hands he made the first real movement in their little comedy. There followed on his speech a slight pause--an interval filled in, as it were, by the provision of accompanying music: the rippling surge.

She essayed to draw her hand away--not putting too much heart in the attempt. He needed to make no superhuman effort to be successful in its retention.

"Do you know that you are the cause of my destruction of three-fourths of a story I have written?"

Her astonishment at his utterance was due to the fact that she did not at all understand him.

"I? Why?"

"The day we met here--a red-letter day in the calendar of my life--when first we sat together on this seat, I was dissatisfied with the heroine I was creating: she was not good enough. You came; I put you in my book; put you in the place of the creation I had been dissatisfied with--the study from life was so much better. And it was so simple; I never had to wander or imagine things about her. She was always--is always--before me."