"Why you don't think for one single moment that--that it was fun, do you?" she questioned whitely. "You don't think for one single solitary little moment that I wanted him to come, do you? Or that there was anything very specially amusing for him in the coming?" Whiter and whiter the little face lifted. "It was only that he said I couldn't come alone to--to face whatever had to be faced. And if he came first he said it would seem like telling tales on me instead of on himself. So----" [7] "Go and get him!" said her father quite sharply. With unquestioning obedience the girl started for the door. Half way across the rug she stopped and swung round squarely. "He will say it was all his fault," she said. "But it wasn't! I--I sort of dared him to do it!" "Just a minute!" called her father. "When you come back with him----" "Am I to come back with him?" protested the girl. "When you come back with him----" repeated her father, "if I ask him to be seated you may leave the room at once--at once, you understand? But if I shouldn't ask him to sit down----" "Then I am to stay and--see it through?" shivered the girl. "Then you are to stay and see it through," said her father. With a little soft thud the door shut between them. When it opened again the man was still standing by the fireplace blowing gray smoke into space. With a casualness that savored [8] almost of affectation he stopped to light another cigarette before glancing up half askance to greet the hesitant footstep on the threshold. "Why, come in!" he ordered. Without further parleying the two young people appeared before him. In the five minutes of her absence the young girl seemed to have grown younger, smaller, infinitely more broken even than her father had remembered her. But almost any girl would have looked unduly frail perhaps before the superbly handsome and altogether stalwart young athlete who loomed up so definitely beside her. As though his daughter suddenly had ceased to exist the father's glance narrowed sharply towards the boy's clean young figure--the eager, worried eyes--the sensitive nostril--the grimly resolute young mouth, and in that glance a gasp that might have meant anything slipped through his own lips. "You're--you're a keen looking lad!" he said. "But I think I could lick you at tennis!" "Sir?" faltered the boy. Quizzically but not unkindly the man [9] resumed his stare. "I don't think I happen to have heard your name," he affirmed with some abruptness. "Wiltoner," said the boy. "Richard Wiltoner." "Sit down, Richard," said the man. Like some tortured creature at bay the boy turned sharply to the window and back towards the door again. "No, I thank you, Sir!" he protested. "I simply couldn't sit down!" Restively he crossed to the bookcase and swung around with a jerk to rake his impatient eyes across the girl's lingering presence. "Maybe I'll never sit down again!" he said. "Nor eat?" drawled the older man. "Nor--sleep?"