She urged him back to his chair, pulled things into some semblance of order. “There, let’s be comfortable after all the melodrama. Here you must eat some of these sandwiches. I made them myself.” She poised herself on the arm of his chair and played with him. “You can’t understand how a girl feels,” she told him, “under a lot of foolish teasing. They all know I’m fond of you--a little anyway” (that fell cold)--“and they take it out of me because I’m honest and not a flirt.” Ted chuckled. “Not a flirt.” “You know what I mean. A girl who has been brought up as I have--can’t let herself go the way other girls of a different class can. I can see that those girls have an advantage. We’re just as--we’re just like they are only they’ve been brought up differently.” She paused for a moment in her fumbling, in the pleading to be admitted to the class of women of easy virtue whom she fancied held her lover in their toils, trying to convince him that she was ripe for abandonment. But he would not help her. He looked at her rather curiously--that was all. Sighing she rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s so nice to have you here.” “But it’s getting late, Bob. I’ll really have to go.” She threw a restraining arm across his chest. “Go where?” “I have to get back--” he said vaguely. It was time for her last card. Actuated by that vivid fear of his possible destination, perhaps, she relaxed completely in his rather unwilling arms. “Don’t go--don’t go at all to-night. Let’s just stay here--together.” She could feel him stiffen and looked up slowly, languorously, slyly at him. But she should have known what she would see--should have known that so easily played a game would not be worth the candle of compromise which would bind him so much more to her. He was too sophisticated to be attracted by unsought abandonment. “Look here, Bob,” he almost shook himself to be free of her, “you’re not quite yourself to-night. You’re a bit tired and you’ll be better for a night’s sleep. I’ll have to run along now. Don’t come down. Good night.” She made a swift movement--then seemed checked by a vision of its futility. The other door closed quietly and heavily. Stripped of the pose that served her for strength, the vanity which served her for modesty, Barbara sat in the leather chair which Ted had abandoned and let her ugly imaginings consume her. CHAPTER XXI WALTER’S SOLUTION