"Not forever and _ever_!" protested Stanton vigorously. "You don't think for a moment, do you, that after all this wonderful, jolly friendship of ours, you're going to drop right out of sight as though the earth had opened?" Even the little quick, forward lurch of his shoulders in the chair sent the girl scuttling to her feet again, one overshoe still in her hand. Just at the edge of the door-mat she turned and smiled at him mockingly. Really it had been a long time since she had smiled. "Surely you don't think that you'd be able to recognize me in my street clothes, do you?" she asked bluntly. Stanton's answering smile was quite as mocking as hers. "Why not?" he queried. "Didn't I have the pleasure of choosing your winter hat for you? Let me see,--it was brown, with a pink rose--wasn't it? I should know it among a million." With a little shrug of her shoulders she leaned back against the door and stared at him suddenly out of her big red-brown eyes with singular intentness. "Well, _will_ you call it an equivalent to one week's subscription?" she asked very gravely. Some long-sleeping devil of mischief awoke in Stanton's senses. "Equivalent to one whole week's subscription?" he repeated with mock incredulity. "A whole week--seven days and nights? Oh, no! No! No! I don't think you've given me, yet, more than about--four days' worth to think about. Just about four days' worth, I should think." Pushing the pink veil further and further back from her features, with plainly quivering hands, the girl's whole soul seemed to blaze out at him suddenly, and then wince back again. Then just as quickly a droll little gleam of malice glinted in her eyes. "Oh, all right then," she smiled. "If you really think I've given you only four days' and nights' worth of thoughts--here's something for the fifth day and night." Very casually, yet still very accurately, her right hand reached out to the knob of the door. "To cancel my debt for the fifth day," she said, "do you really 'honest-injun' want to know who I am? I'll tell you! First, you've seen me before." "What?" cried Stanton, plunging forward in his chair. Something in the girl's quick clutch of the door-knob warned him quite distinctly to relax again into his cushions. "Yes," she repeated triumphantly. "And you've talked with me too, as often as twice! And moreover you've danced with me!" Tossing her head with sudden-born daring she reached up and snatched off her curly black wig, and shook down all around her such a great, shining, utterly glorious mass of mahogany colored hair that Stanton's astonishment turned almost into faintness. "What?" he cried out. "What? You say I've seen you before? Talked with you? Waltzed with you, perhaps? Never! I haven't! I tell you I haven't! I never saw that hair before! If I had, I shouldn't have forgotten it to my dying day. Why--"