“How’re you, Beechman?” said I, ignoring the signs of foul weather. “Armitage told me you were in town, but didn’t know your address. Stopping long?” “You are a scoundrel,” said he. I shrugged my shoulders. As I was much the larger and stronger man I could afford to do it. “So I’ve often heard,” said I. “Perhaps it’s true. What of it? Why should you think I cared to know your opinion of me?” “If I send you a challenge will you accept it?” I laughed. “No, I never pay the slightest attention to crank letters.” “You are a coward. You will not give me a chance to meet you on equal terms.” “I’ll take you over my knee and give you a spanking if you don’t behave yourself,” said I, and I pushed him out of my path and was passing on. “You took her away from me,” he jeered. “But it will do you no good. She is laughing at us both.” I strode away. I had heard enough to put me in high good humor. * * * * * As the end of my wait upon the anxious seat drew into its last week, I fell into a state of deep depression. Too much eating and drinking was, of course, the cause. But I had to pass the time somehow; and what is there to do in London but eat and drink? Four days before the last, Rossiter came into my sitting room with the news that Edna was calling. There arose a nice question: Would I better send word I was out or see her? Because of my knowledge of her persistence where her interest was really engaged, I decided to see her and have done with. So in she came, vivacious, radiant--dressed for a scene in which she was to be heroine, as I saw at a glance. “Pray don’t think I’m going to repeat what I did the other day,” cried she by way of beginning. “I’m in quite another mood.” “So I see,” said I. “I was horribly ashamed and disgusted with myself afterwards,” she went on. “You must have thought me crazy. In fact, you did. You treated me as if I were.” “Won’t you sit?” said I, arranging a chair for her. She smiled mischievously at me as she seated herself. “You do know something about women,” said she. “You put this chair so that my face would be spared the strong light.” As she said this, she turned into the full strength of the light a face as free as a girl’s from wrinkles or any other sign of years. “You certainly do know something about women.” “Very little,” said I, for it was not a time to pause and poke a finger into the swelling bubble of woman’s baffling complexity and unfathomable mystery. “You’ve come to tell me what it was you wanted the other day?” She shook her head. She was wearing a charming hat--but her costumes were never indifferent and nearly always charming--a feat the more remarkable because she, being a timidly conventional woman, followed the fashions and ventured cautiously and never far in individual style. “You’re usually right, my dear,” said she, “in your guesses at people’s underlying motives. But you were mistaken that time. I wanted exactly what I said. I wanted _you_.”