"Your fifteen minutes are up, Betty," he said presently, taking out his watch. "Well, I suppose I'll have to go then." Dick rose politely. "You really don't care whether I go or stay, do you?" she sighed. "I would rather have you go, Betty," he said gravely. Betty's eyes filled with sudden tears, that Dick to his surprise realized were genuine. "I wanted you to want me to stay," she said incoherently. "I suppose you're just a miserable little thing that doesn't want to be alone," he concluded. "Come, I'll take you home." The telephone bell on the table beside him rang sharply. "I'm just going out," he said to Billy, on the wire. "Betty is here with a fit of the blues. I'm going to take her home. Ride up with us, will you?" "He'll meet us down-stairs in ten minutes," he said. "I'll order a taxi." "I don't want to see Billy," Betty said rebelliously. She rose suddenly, pulling on her gloves, and took a step forward as if about to brush by him petulantly, but as she did so she staggered, put her hand to her eyes, and fell forward against his breast. Dick picked up the limp little body, and made his way to the couch where he deposited it gently among the stiff red pillows there. Then he began to chafe her hands, to push back the tumbled hair from which the fur hat had been displaced, and finally fallen off, and to call out her name remorsefully. "Betty, dear, dearest," he cried, "I didn't know, I didn't dream,--I thought you were just trying it on. I'm so sorry, dear, I am so sorry." She moaned softly, and he bent over her again more closely. Then he gathered her up in his arms. "Betty, dear, Betty," he said again. She opened her eyes. Her two soft arms stole up around his neck, and she lifted her lips. "You little devil," Dick cried, almost at the same instant that he kissed her. "She deserves to be spanked," he told Billy grimly at the door. "She got in my apartment when I was out, and insisted on staying there till I came in, to make me a visit." "He doesn't understand me," Betty complained, as she cuddled confidingly in the corner of the taxi-cab, "when I'm serious he doesn't realize or appreciate it, and he doesn't understand the nature of my practical jokes." "I don't like--practical jokes," Dick said. "Have you seen Preston Eustace, Billy?" "I haven't seen Caroline," Billy said, as if that disposed of all the interrogatory remarks that might be addressed to him in the present or the future. "It's a nice-looking river," Betty said, looking out at the softly gleaming surface of the Hudson, as their cab took the drive. "It looks strange to-night, though, laden with all kinds of queer little boats. I wonder how it would feel to be drifting down it, or up it, on a barque or a barkentine--I don't know what a barkentine is--all dead like Elaine or Ophelia,--with your hands neatly folded across your breast?"