Or she would say, leaning out towards him, “I wonder what it is that you like about me, Meester Deek. There are so many things you don’t like, though you never tell me. You don’t like my powdering, or my smoking cigarettes, or--oh, such lots of things. But where’s the harm? And there’s another thing you won’t like--I’m going to dye my hair to auburn.” This threat, that she would dye her hair, led to endless conversations. It made him bold to tell her how pretty she was, which was exactly what she wanted. Sometimes she was sweetly grown up, preparing him for disillusionment; but it was when she was little that he loved her best Then she would give him the most artless confidences; telling him about her religion, how she prayed for him night and morning, and of her longings to know her father. She would plead with him to tell her about Orchid Lodge and Mrs. Sheerug, and Ruddy, and Harriet She came to picture the old house as if she had lived there, and yet she was never tired of hearing the old details afresh. Orchid Lodge became a secret between them--one of their many secrets, like the name she had given him. And still they drifted undecided. Then the series of events happened which forced their love to its first anchorage. CHAPTER XIV--THE TRIFLERS GROW EARNEST Night was tremulous with the beat of wings. The first snow of the season was falling, giving to familiar streets a theatric look of enchanted strangeness. Large flakes sailed confidently as descending doves; little ones came in flurries like a storm of petals. Perhaps boy-angels in heavenly orchards were shaking the blossoms with their romping. Teddy glanced at the girl beside him; it seemed that an all-wise providence had sent the snow especially as a background for her. They were returning from the final performance of _October_. They had been behind the scenes with Fluffy, where friends had been drugging her melancholy with the assurance that, whatever might be said of the play, her acting had scored a triumph. The illusion of the footlights followed them. Streets were a new stage-setting in which they had become the dominant personalities. The shrieking of motor-horns above the din of traffic seemed the agonized cry of defeated lovers, divided in a chaos of misunderstandings. As they drove up Broadway Desire crouched with her cheek against the pane. She was trying to make out the hoardings on which the name of Janice Audrey was featured in large letters. While she performed her ritual at each vanishing shrine, Teddy sat unheeded. Her saint-like hands were clasped against her breast. Her face hung palely meditative, a shadow cast upon the dusk. She filled the night with fragrance. The falling flakes outside seemed to kiss her hair in passing. He could only imagine the old-rose shade of the velvet opera-cloak that hid her from him. Her white-fox furs lay across her shoulders like drifted snow. He ached intolerably to take her in his arms.