"There! That proves exactly what I was just saying," raged the delighted trapper. "You don't even deny it! You say in so many words that I have been courting you! I had to say something--didn't I? You wouldn't! You were limping, so I asked you if you were lame. What else could I have said? Did you want me to stand there like a stuffed Egyptian mummy? That's the thanks a girl gets for trying to help a great, awkward, blundering butter-fingers! Oh, if you could just see yourself! The irresistible conqueror! Not altogether unprincipled though! You _are_ capable of compunction. I'll give you credit for that. Alarmed at your easy success, you try to spare me. It is noble of you--noble! You drag me out here, force a quarrel upon me----" "Oh, by Jove now! Really!" Stung by the poignant injustice of crowding events, Jeff took the bit in his teeth and rushed to destruction. "Really, you must see yourself that I couldn't drag you out here! I have never been in that hall before. I didn't know the lay of the ground. I didn't even know that little side room was there. I thought you pressed my arm a little----" So the brainless colt, in the quicksands, flounders deeper with each effort to extricate himself. If Miss Hoffman had been angry before she was furious now. "So _that's_ the way of it? Better and better! _I_ dragged _you_ out! Really, Mr. Bransford, I feel that I should take you back to your chaperon at once. You might be compromised, you know!" Goaded to desperation, he acted on this hint at once. He turned, with stiff and stilted speech: "I will take you back to the window, Miss Hoffman. Then there is nothing for me to do but go. I am sorry to have caused you even a moment's annoyance. To-morrow you will see how you have twisted--I mean, how completely you have misinterpreted everything I have said. Perhaps some day you may forgive me. Here is the window. Good-night--good-by!" Miss Hoffman lingered, however. "Of course, if you apologize----" "I do, Miss Hoffman. I beg your pardon most sincerely for anything I have ever said or done that could hurt you in any way." "If you are sure you are sorry--if you take it all back and will never do such a thing again--perhaps I may forgive you." "I won't--I am--I will!" said the abject and groveling wretch. Which was incoherent but pleasing. "I didn't mean anything the way you took it; but I'm sorry for everything." "Then I didn't beguile you to come? Or mask as a Friend in the hope that you would identify me?" "No, no!" Miss Ellinor pressed her advantage cruelly. "Nor take stock of each new masker to see if he possibly wasn't the expected Mr. Bransford? Nor drag you into the garden? Nor squeeze your arm?" Her hands went to her face, her lissome body shook. "Oh, Mr. Bransford!" she sobbed between her fingers. "How could you--how _could_ you say that?"