“Had to. Didn’t you ask me?” In faint surprise. Then he remembered she didn’t know he _had_ to tell the truth. That made him look rather foolish—or “imbecile,” in the light of all those other proceedings. Miss Gerald’s brow contracted once more. Again she might be asking herself if Master Robert was acting? Was this but gigantic, bombastic, Quixotic “posing” after all? It was too extraordinary to speak of such things as he had spoken of, to her! Did he only want to appear different? Did he seek to combine Apollo with Bernard Shaw in his attitude toward society? Or had he been reading Chesterton and was he but striving to present in his own personality a futurist’s effect of upside-downness? Miss Gerald felt now the way she had at the modernists’ exhibition, when she had gazed and gazed at what was apparently a load of wood falling down-stairs, and some one had told her to find the lady. It was about as difficult to-night to find the real Mr. Bennett—the happy-go-lucky Bob Bennett of last month or last week—as it had been to find that lady where appeared only chaotic kindling wood. Miss Gerald let the cool air fan her brow for a few moments. This young man was, at least, exhilarating. She felt a little dizzy. Meanwhile Bob looked at her with that sad silly smile. “You can’t ask me any questions that will disconcert me now,” he boasted. Miss Gerald looked at him squarely. “Will you marry me?” she said. It was a coup. Her father had been capable of just such coups as that. He would hit the enemy in the most unexpected manner in the most unexpected quarter, and thus overwhelm his foes. Miss Gerald might not mean it; she, most likely, only said it. Under the circumstances, to get at the truth herself, she was justified in saying almost anything. If he were but posing, she would prick the bubble of his pretense. If those grandiloquent, and, to her, totally unnecessary protestations didn’t mean anything, she wished to know it. He would never, never marry her,—wouldn’t he? Or, possibly, her question was but part of a plan, or general campaign, on her part, to test his sanity? Six persons—real competents, too!—had affirmed that he wasn’t “just right.” Be that as it may, Miss Gerald dropped this bomb in Master Bob’s camp and waited the effect with mien serene. Her query worked the expected havoc, all right. Bob’s jaw fell. Then his eyes began to flash with a new fierce love-light. He couldn’t help it. Marry her?—Great Scott!—She, asking him, if he would? He felt his pulses beating faster and the blood pumping in his veins. His arms went out—very eager, strong, primitive arms they looked—that cave-man kind! Arms that seize resistless maidens and enfold them, willy-nilly! Miss Gerald really should have felt much alarmed, especially as there was so much doubt as to Bob’s sanity. It’s bad enough to be alone with an ordinary crazy man, but a crazy man who is in love with one? That is calculated to be a rather unusual and thrilling experience.