"Because--you _are_! You're not a bit sociable and friendly--even _your_ sort of sociability. I'm a guest in your mother's house if I'm nothing else and it's your duty to be civil." "Haven't I always been civil to you, Darsie?" Darsie drew a quick breath of impatience and, seizing upon the poker, beat at the unoffending coal as the best method of letting off steam. "You are so painfully literal. I can _feel_ what other people are thinking, however much they try to disguise it." "How do _I_ feel, for example?" Darsie turned her head and stared curiously into Dan's face. The hand on which it leaned shielded it somewhat from view, but, even so, there was something in the intent gaze which filled her with a strange new discomfort. She turned back to her poking once more. "I think--there's something that I don't understand--I think--there's something you disapprove! I'm a very good girl, and I work very hard, and I'm fond of my friends, and I expect them to be fond of me in return. I don't _like_ you to disapprove, Dan!" "I can't help it, Darsie. I've hated that friendship from the beginning, and I hate it more with every month that passes." "Oh! _that_ old story." Darsie's voice took a tone of impatience; for it was annoying to find that Dan was harking back on the well-known subject of dispute. "Well, I'm sorry to distress you, but I am conceited enough to believe that I have taken no harm from my friendship with Ralph Percival, and that he has reaped some little good from mine. While that state of thing continues, I shall certainly refuse to give him up--even to please you!" There was silence for several moments, then Dan said slowly-- "If I agreed with your conclusions, I should not try to persuade you, Darsie; but I do not, and my opportunities of judging are better than yours." "You are unfair, Dan. It is a pity to allow yourself to be so prejudiced that you can't give a fair judgment. I should have imagined that even you would be forced to admit that Ralph had done better this term." Dan did not speak. He turned his head and looked Darsie full in the eyes, and there was in his look a puzzled, questioning air, which she found it difficult to understand. When he spoke again, it was not to reply in any direct way to her accusation, but to ask a question on his own account. "Darsie, do you mind telling me--is your position entirely disinterested? Do you look upon the fellow merely as a man to be helped, or do you care for him for his own personal sake?" Darsie deliberated. The firelight played on her downcast face, on the long white throat rising from the low collar of her white blouse, on the little hands clenched round the steel poker. Before her mind's eye arose the memory of handsome, melancholy eyes; imagination conjured back the sound of impassioned appeals. Her expression softened, her voice took a deeper note. "He needs me, Dan!"