“_Absolvo te!_” she intoned. “I’m a little cat ever to scratch you; and I’m silly to let perfectly harmless things hurt me. I don’t know why I do it. Sometimes I don’t know my own self any more than if I was a Frisian market woman in a pink baize bonnet and number ten sabots. It’s just because you’re so good and sweet and gentle that I walk all over you. Because you let me do it I take out all my bad, horrid, nasty tempers on you. And then you look so surprised and unhappy when I say snippy, mean things to you; or when I tell you you make me feel badly and--oh _where_ is my nominative case? Anyway, you’re my dear, old splendid chum. And I wouldn’t be so cranky to you if I didn’t care more for your little finger than for any other man’s head. And if you’d only hit me or swear at me now and then, I’d be _lots_ nicer. Why don’t you?” Caleb, agape, yet grinning in feeble delight, tried to understand part of this rapid-fire speech of penance. Almost wholly failing to grasp her meaning, he nevertheless gathered that he was pardoned for his unknown offence and that she was once more happy. Hence the weight was off his mind and he rejoiced. “And just to punish myself,” Desirée was saying, “I’m going to tell you about Jack Hawarden. He came here and asked me to marry him. And I told him he was an awfully nice boy. And I felt I was unkind and cruel and a lot of other things because I had to tell him I wasn’t in love with him. But he behaved beautifully. He’s going to keep on coming to see me, just the same and we’re going to be just as good friends as ever. But he says he isn’t going to give up trying to make me change my mind. Then I changed the subject by making him listen to Siegfried-Mickey singing ‘The Death of Ase.’ And from that I got him to talking about the things he’s writing. He says he believes some day his stories will sell like wild-fire. If you’ve never tried to sell wild-fire you can’t appreciate what an eager market there is for it. I told him that and he didn’t like it very well. But altogether I steered him off from talking about marrying me. So the rest didn’t matter very much. _Did_ it? Are you _sure_ you can remember all the things I explained to you about that dinner? At the musicale itself I shall try to get a chance to take you under my own wing, and keep you from burning your poor fingers. But--” “If you think I’m goin’ to queer you, at the musicle, by taggin’ around after you, you’re dead wrong,” declared Caleb. “You get ’bout as much of me as you need, here at your own house; without havin’ me scarin’ better men away from you at parties. No, no. I’m goin’ to set in a corner an’ watch folks fallin’ over ’emselves to talk to you.”