"I know what you mean," he admitted. "I hypnotized you into coming here, and you are aware of it." Pink to the ears with resentment and confusion, she sat up very straight and stared at him. From a pretty girl defiant, she became an angry beauty. And he quailed. "Did you imagine that you hypnotized me?" she asked, incredulously. "What was it, then?" he muttered. "You did everything I wished for--" "What did you wish for?" "I--I thought you needed the sun, and as soon as I said that you ought to go out, you--you put on that big, black hat. And then I wished I knew you--I wished you would come here to the wistaria arbor, and--you came." "In other words," she said, disdainfully, "you deliberately planned to control my mind and induce me to meet you in a clandestine and horrid manner." "I never looked at it in that way. I only knew I admired you a lot, and--and you were tremendously charming--more so than my sketch--" "_What_ sketch?" "I--you see, I made a little sketch," he admitted--"a little picture of you--" Her silence scared him. "Do you mind?" he ventured. "Of course you will send that portrait to me at once!" she said. "Oh yes, of course I will; I had meant to send it anyway--" "That," she observed, "would have been the very height of impertinence." Opening her book again, she indulged him with a view of the most exquisite profile he had ever dreamed of. She despised him; there seemed to be no doubt about that. He despised himself; his offence, stripped by her of all extenuation, appeared to him in its own naked hideousness; and it appalled him. "As a matter of fact," he said, "there's nothing criminal in me. I never imagined that a man could appear to such disadvantage as I appear. I'll go. There's no use in hoping for pardon. I'll go." Studying her book, she said, without raising her eyes, "I am offended--deeply hurt--but--" He waited anxiously. "But I am sorry to say that I am not as deeply offended as I ought to be." "That is very, very kind of you," he said, warmly. "It is very depraved of me," she retorted, turning a page. After a silence, he said, "Then I suppose I must go." It is possible she did not hear him; she seemed engrossed, bending a little closer over the book on her knee, for the shadows of blossom and foliage above had crept across the printed page. All the silence was in tremulous vibration with the hum of bees; the perfume of the flowers grew sweeter as the sun sank towards the west, flinging long, blue shadows over the grass and asphalt. A gray squirrel came hopping along, tail twitching, and deliberately climbed up the seat where she was sitting, squatting beside her, paws drooping in dumb appeal. "You dear little thing!" said the girl, impulsively. "I wish I had a bonbon for you! Have you anything in the world to give this half-starved squirrel, Mr. Tennant?"