"Since you insist--!" he began very carefully. "My dryad in this enchanted wood is the most enticing spirit ever clothed in the graces of woman. That's all." Again he turned to his cigarette. Again the red glow and the serious face. Again her accurate suspicion. "If that is all, you're not playing fair. Does she live in a tree?" "No. She lives in a big white house with big white columns; by night she haunts me, but by day she holds school for mortals in a shady grove." "I thought you were more original than that," she said, in an expressionless voice. "So we're not to talk any more, are we!" "But I swear--" he began. "So do I," she interrupted him, "that you bore me to extinction with things like that, Brent; honestly you do! If you can't be just a little bit sincere, I can't be interested in you." They had known each other for more than two months; two months of almost daily, unconventional contact, but this was the first time she had called him Brent. It came now as a master-stroke for true understanding, and he threw back his head and laughed. "My, but you're a corker--beg pardon--I mean a live wire!" "Overwhelming flattery in either case," she smiled, "and that's the second sincere thing you've said." "The second! Well, I like that! Perhaps when you begin thinking less about yourself, you'll be able to see more virtues in other people!" "No one has ever accused me of thinking particularly about myself," she righteously flushed. "No one has to," he replied, teasingly. "Being a teacher--although a very young and charming one--presupposes egotism." "Your analysis is shrewd tonight," she coolly observed. "Not at all," he affably continued. "An egoist, and a woman whose dress is unhooked in the back, are always blissfully unconscious that the world is seeing more of them than they normally would permit." Her hand stole to the back of her waist. He saw this and again began to laugh, saying: "I fancy that part is all right. And you know how far I am from meaning the other, too!" "I'm probably different from most of your friends," she spoke rather quickly, "because I'd rather tell an unpleasant truth than a conventional falsehood. Truth, to me, is the bravest and most beautiful thing in life. And one reason," she added, leaning imperceptibly nearer to see his face, "that women so love it in a man is because it makes of him a sort of restful harbor she can steer to from gathering worries. No man can possibly know how comforting it is for a girl's course to be laid within easy running distance of a safe harbor. He may know of wrecks which occur without them, but seldom considers how easily many of these might have been averted." "Men sometimes feel that way about girls," he suggested. "Only, in girls, they ask for tenderness." She took the rebuke, simply adding: "Girls feel tenderness for shelter, not for a destroying sea."