Then, speaking in a puzzled way: “You make things difficult. I shouldn’t be doing right by encouraging you, and----” She faltered over her words. The innocent kindness shone in her eyes. “And I can’t bear to send you away. I don’t know what to do. I’d have encouraged you if I’d written to thank you for those flowers, shouldn’t I? But they made me just as happy as---- I was a regular baby over them. Every morning they lay there on my plate and I wore them the whole day. Fluffy used to chaff me. You don’t like Fluffy.” She winked at him provokingly. “Oh, no, you don’t! You think actresses improper persons. You needn’t deny it.--And I do so want to be an actress, so as to prove to my father and Mrs. Sheerug, and all the lot of them, that I’m worth knowing. Can’t you understand? After I’m great, I might be content to chuck the stage and become only a simple good little wife.” “Wouldn’t it be as fine,” he whispered, “to share some one else’s success?” She gazed at him wisely. “Philanthropic egotist! You know it wouldn’t. Own up--don’t you know it wouldn’t?” “For a man it wouldn’t,” he conceded ruefully. She smiled vaguely. “Then why for a woman? Only love could make it different. You believe in love at first sight. I don’t At least, I’m not sure about it.” “But you can’t call ours love at first sight.” “Ours!” She raised her brows. “Yours was. You had your magic cloak ready to pop over me the moment you thought you’d found me. I’m only a lay figure.” “You’re not,” he protested hotly. “If you’d read my book, you’d know that. Your face is on every page.” “A lay figure,” she repeated imperturbably. She did not gratify his curiosity as to whether she had read _Life Till Twenty-one._ He waited. At last, driven to desperation, he asked, “What am I to do?” “Do?” “Yes. I’ve nothing to keep me in America; I had nothing to bring me over except you. If I stay here and don’t give my people an explanation, they’ll begin to wonder. It won’t be playing the game. So if you don’t care----” She laughed so gayly that she made all his mountain difficulties seem molehills. “What an old serious! You can’t set times and seasons for love. Sooner or later, if you keep on jogging, everything turns out all right. You’ve got to believe that. _It does_.” Since she was his prophetess, he let her optimism go undisputed. He almost shared it. But it didn’t provide him with a certain foundation for his future. “If you’ll stop drizzling,” she said, “I’ll set Miss Independence free for a run. There!” She pulled the glove off her left hand and made it scamper in the blue and green meadow of her gown. Then, of a sudden, the temptress fingers shot out and caressed him for the merest second.