“And--and that’s why you insisted on my bathing: to get rid of me for a little while so that----” She cut him short. “Feeding-time. You ask too many questions.” As they walked to the hotel, she chattered at length of her adventure. “The man who took it, he thought I was an actress. Wanted to know in what show I was playing.--You don’t consider that a compliment?” “Not much.” He was only half listening. He was remembering his unworthy suspicion, that she had stolen a respite to court admiration. Perhaps all his suspicions had been equally ill-founded. Perhaps behind each of her inconsideratenesses lay a concealed kindness--a tender forethought. If it had been so in one case, why not in all? “Sweetly ungrateful,” Vashti had called her; “she feels far more than she’ll ever express--goes out of her way to make people misunderstand her.” And she’d added: “It’s because---- Can’t you guess? She’s afraid to love too much. Her mother got hurt.” He felt humiliated--unworthy to walk beside her. No wonder she’d smiled at his ideas of love! He’d make it his life’s work, if need be, to teach her what love really meant. He vowed to himself that whatever she did, no matter how compromising the circumstances, for the future he would give her the benefit of the doubt He would never again distrust her. He would keep that pathetically cheap little photograph and gaze at it as a poignant warning. CHAPTER IX--SHE ELUDES HIM They were crossing the hotel foyer, when something caught her attention. Without explanation, she darted from his side. Thinking she had seen a friend, he did not follow at first. She made straight for the news-stand; picking up a magazine, she commenced skimming its pages. He strolled over and peered across her shoulder. “_The Theatre!_ Something in it that you want? Shall I buy it for you?” She did not seem to hear him. He touched her hand, repeating his question. For answer she turned back to the cover-design. “Isn’t she wonderful?” He recognized the stooping face and the vague hypnotic smile that he had seen in the many photographs that decorated the walls of the apartment. “Don’t know about wonderful,” he said carelessly; “she’s all right.” “All right!” Desire frowned her restrained annoyance. “No one who knows anything about Fluffy would call her ‘all right.’ She’s wonderful. I adore her.” He chuckled. He hadn’t wakened to the enormity of his offense. “You’re a curious girl Surely you, of all persons, don’t want me to adore her?” Her frown did not lighten. “Shall I buy it for you, Princess? You can glance through it while we’re waiting for our meal to be served.” She ignored his offer and drew out her purse. As they turned away she said, “If you’d liked her, I’d have allowed you to pay for it.” “But why should I like her? I’ve never met her. You talk as though I detested her.” “You do. And I know why. You’re jealous.”