“I suppose you were one of those curly-headed little boys?” went on the temperamental young thing. “I don’t know whether I was or not,” he snapped. He was getting back into that snappy mood. Then it struck him this might not be quite the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for he added sulkily; “Maybe I was.” “I can just see you,” said the temperamental young thing in a far-off voice. “Nursie must have thought you a darling.” The slave again muttered ominously. He wished the temperamental little thing would take her fingers away. They trailed now idly over an ear. “You’re tickling,” said Bob ill-naturedly. She stopped trailing and patted instead—very gently and carelessly—as if she were patting a big Newfoundland dog which she owned all by herself. That pat expressed a sense of ownership. “I’m wondering,” she said, “whether it would make things nicer, if I did propose and we became engaged?” “Oh,” said Bob satirically, “you’re wondering that, are you?” “Yes.” More tentative pats. “And what do you suppose I’d say?” he demanded. He was feeling more and more grouchy all the time. He didn’t want any of that “superwoman” business. He had already had one proposal. What mockery! A proposal! He heard again that other “Will you marry me?” and looked once more, in fancy, into the starry, enigmatical violet eyes. He experienced anew that surging sensation in his veins. And he awoke again to the hollow jest of those words! He felt, indeed, a moderately vivid duplication of all his emotions of the night before. The temperamental young thing’s voice recalled him from the poignant recollections of the painful past into the dreary and monotonous present. “Why, you actually blushed, just now,” she said accusingly. “Did I?” growled Bob, looking grudgingly into dark eyes where a moment before, in imagination, there had been starry violet ones. “Yes, you did. And”—her voice taking a tenderer accent—“it was becoming, too.” “Rush of blood to the head,” he retorted shortly. “Comes from lying like this.” “What would you say if I did?” she demanded, reverting to that other topic. “Propose, I mean? Would you accept? Would you take me—I mean, shyly suffer me,” with a giggle, “to take you into my arms?” “Quit joshing!” growled Bob. “Answer. Would you?” “No.” “No?” Bending over him more closely. For a “super,” she was certainly wonderfully attractive in her slim young way at that moment. Not many of the inferior sex would have acted quite so stonily as Bob acted. He didn’t show any more emotion when she bent over than one of those prostrate stone Pharaohs, or Rameses, which lie around with immovable features on the sands of Egypt. “You see you couldn’t help it,” the super-temperamental young thing assured him, confidentially. “Ouch!” said Bob, for she was tickling again. He wished she would keep those trailing fingers in her lap. They felt like a fly perambulating his brow or walking around his ear.