"If I am quarrelsome, then I had better leave you." He halted suddenly, and she stood beside him. "Here comes Dave Harney. He will see you home. It's only a step." "You are doing neither yourself nor me kindness." She spoke with final firmness. "I decline to consider this the end. We are too close to it to understand it fairly. You must come and see me when we are both calmer. I refuse to be treated in this fashion. It is childish of you." She shot a hasty glance at the approaching Eldorado king. "I do not think I deserve it at your hands. I refuse to lose you as a friend. And I insist that you come and see me, that things remain on the old footing." He shook his head. "Hello!" Dave Harney touched his cap and slowed down loose-jointedly. "Sorry you didn't take my tip? Dogs gone up a dollar a pound since yesterday, and still a-whoopin'. Good-afternoon, Miss Frona, and Mr. Corliss. Goin' my way?" "Miss Welse is." Corliss touched the visor of his cap and half-turned on his heel. "Where're you off to?" Dave demanded. "Got an appointment," he lied. "Remember," Frona called to him, "you must come and see me." "Too busy, I'm afraid, just now. Good-by. So long, Dave." "Jemimy!" Dave remarked, staring after him; "but he's a hustler. Always busy--with big things, too. Wonder why he didn't go in for dogs?" CHAPTER XV But Corliss did go back to see her, and before the day was out. A little bitter self-communion had not taken long to show him his childishness. The sting of loss was hard enough, but the thought, now they could be nothing to each other, that her last impressions of him should be bad, hurt almost as much, and in a way, even more. And further, putting all to the side, he was really ashamed. He had thought that he could have taken such a disappointment more manfully, especially since in advance he had not been at all sure of his footing. So he called upon her, walked with her up to the Barracks, and on the way, with her help, managed to soften the awkwardness which the morning had left between them. He talked reasonably and meekly, which she countenanced, and would have apologized roundly had she not prevented him. "Not the slightest bit of blame attaches to you," she said. "Had I been in your place, I should probably have done the same and behaved much more outrageously. For you were outrageous, you know." "But had you been in my place, and I in yours," he answered, with a weak attempt at humor, "there would have been no need." She smiled, glad that he was feeling less strongly about it. "But, unhappily, our social wisdom does not permit such a reversal," he added, more with a desire to be saying something. "Ah!" she laughed. "There's where my Jesuitism comes in. I can rise above our social wisdom." "You don't mean to say,--that--?"