He caught her hand. "Do, Nance! And make it nice. It's going to be no end of a grind to leave you. Say something pretty that I can live on 'til Christmas. Tell me I'm the sweetest fellow that ever lived. Go on. Make love to me, Nance!" "I think you are a short-sport!" she burst forth. "Any fellow that'll go on making debts when he can't pay his old ones, that'll get things in a muddle and run off and let somebody else face the racket is a coward--I think--" "Help! Help!" cried Mac, throwing up an arm in pretended defense, and laughing at her flashing eyes and blazing cheeks. "By jinks, I don't know whether you look prettiest when you are mad or when you are glad. If you don't stop this minute I'll have to kiss you!" The anger in Nance's face faded into exasperation. She felt suddenly hot and uncomfortable and a little ashamed of her violence. She had neither offended him nor humiliated him; she had simply amused him. Tears of chagrin sprang to her eyes, and she turned away abruptly. "Nance!" Mac demanded, with quick concern, "you surely aren't crying? Why the very idea! It makes me perfectly miserable to see girls cry. You mustn't, you know. Look at me, Nance! Smile at me this minute!" But Nance's head was down on her desk, and she was past smiling. "I'll do anything you say!" cried Mac, dropping on his knees beside her. "I'll 'fess up to the governor. I'll go on the water-wagon. I'll cut out the races. I'll be a regular little tin god if you'll only promise to be good to me." "Good to you nothing!" said Nance, savagely, lifting a tear-stained, earnest face. "What right have I got to be anything to you? Haven't I been letting you spend the money on me that wasn't yours? I've been as bad as you have, every bit." "Oh, rot!" said Mac, hotly. "You've been an angel. There isn't another girl in the world that's as much fun as you are and yet on the square every minute." "It isn't on the square!" contradicted Nance, twisting her wet handkerchief into a ball. "Sneaking around corners and doing things on the sly. I am ashamed to tell you where I live, or who my people are, and you are ashamed to have your family know you are going with me. Whenever I look at your father and see him worrying about you, or think of your mother--" "Yes, you think of everybody but me. You hold me at arm's length and knock on me and say things to me that nobody else would dare to say! And the worse you treat me, the more I want to take you in my arms and run away with you. Can't you love me a little, Nance? Please!" He was close to her, with his ardent face on a level with hers. He was never more irresistible than when he wanted something, especially a forbidden something, and in the course of his twenty-one years he had never wanted anything so much as he wanted Nance Molloy. She caught her breath and looked away. It was very hard to say what she intended, with him so close to her. His eloquent eyes, his tremulous lips were very disconcerting.