"Oh, dear!" Then her face sobered and she almost pouted. "Now you mustn't--please, _really_--it gets so tiresome. Don't you American, or rather, you Harvard men, ever talk anything to a girl but love? Why, it's absurd." She smiled, but her lashes dropped reproof. By Jove, I was taken back a little! Evidently she was piqued with me about something, but what the devil was it? And then I thought I had it. I slipped nearer--to the edge of the chair. "I didn't know you were in town to-day--'pon honor, I didn't. Billings never said a word about it," I explained. "Why, dash it, I would have given _anything_ to have known." She looked at me with a queer little smile, stroked her little lip with the point of one gloved finger and looked across the river at the Palisades. Dash the Palisades! Never could see any sense in them, anyhow! "Oh, thank you, but Elizabeth and I didn't know ourselves until last evening that we would make the New York trip. She wanted to hear a suffragette lecture at the Carnegie, and I had some shopping to do." And she just gave me one of those calm, self-contained, thoroughbred sort of smiles that are harder to get past than a six-foot hedge. What the deuce _was_ the matter with the girl? Something had changed her; yet I knew that nothing could really change her at heart--never. But it was certain that she was put out about something. I would just have to play her easy and try to find out what it was. I remembered hearing Pugsley say--and he has had no end of experience with them--that when women are put out they expect you to find out what it is, no matter how devilishly improbable or unreasonable it may be. And just then I remembered another clever idea of Pugsley's--what he said was a corking good way of diverting their minds. "I say, you know," I said suddenly--and though I threw a whole lot of enthusiasm into my face in carrying out his idea, I didn't have to try very hard--"I think that's a ripping gown. White is ever so much more your style than--than--" By Jove, I swallowed just in time! But it had roused her. I could see her brighten. "Oh!" she said. "Let me see--what _is_ it you remember?" And she kind of muttered, "Perhaps I can tell from that--" She paused expectantly. "Oh, I say, you know!" And I twirled the hat, feeling a bit rattled. Why the deuce did she want to rub it in? "But I want you to tell me." Her beautiful eyes were teasing. "_You_ know--in black." I twirled the hat faster. "_Black!_" She stared, her exquisite lips standing apart like the two petals of a rose. "Why, I never wore black in my life. You _know_ you never saw me in black." I felt hurt. I couldn't blame her for wanting to appear to forget about it, but still--