_She_, calling after him: “The receipt, Mr. Ransom! Please sign this receipt!” _She_ waves the paper in the air. _He_: “Oh, yes, certainly! Where is it—what—which”—_He_ rushes back to her, and seizing the receipt, feels blindly about for the pen and ink. “Where shall I sign?” _She_: “Read it first.” _He_: “Oh, it’s all—all right”— _She_: “I insist upon your reading it. It’s a business transaction. Read it aloud.” _He_, desperately: “Well, well!” _He_ reads. “‘Received from Miss Ethel Reed, in full, for twenty-five lessons in oil-painting, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and her hand, heart, and dearest love forever.’” _He_ looks up at her. “Ethel!” _She_, smiling: “Sign it, sign it!” _He_, catching her in his arms and kissing her: “Oh, yes—_here_!” _She_, pulling a little away from him, and laughing: “Oh, oh! I only wanted _one_ signature! Twenty autographs are too many, unless you’ll let me trade them off, as the collectors do.” _He_: “No; keep them all! I couldn’t think of letting any one else have them. One more!” _She_: “No; it’s quite enough!” _She_ frees herself, and retires beyond the table. “This unexpected affection”— _He_: “_Is_ it unexpected—seriously?” _She_: “What do you mean?” _He_: “Oh, nothing!” _She_: “Yes, tell me!” _He_: “I hoped—I thought—perhaps—that you might have been prepared for some such demonstration on my part.” _She_: “And why did you think—hope—perhaps—_that_, Mr. Ransom, may I ask?” _He_: “If I hadn’t, how should I have dared to speak?” _She_: “Dared? You were obliged to speak! Well, since it’s all over, I don’t mind saying that I _did_ have some slight apprehensions that something in the way of a declaration might be extorted from you.” _He_: “Extorted? Oh!” He makes an impassioned rush toward her. _She_, keeping the table between them: “No, no.” _He_: “Oh, I merely wished to ask why you chose to make me suffer so, after I had come to the point.” _She_: “Ask it across the table, then.” After a moment’s reflection, “I made you suffer—I made you suffer—so that you might have a realizing sense of what you had made _me_ suffer.” _He_, enraptured by this confession: “Oh, you angel!” _She_, with tender magnanimity: “No; only a woman—a poor, trusting, foolish woman!” She permits him to surround the table, with imaginable results. Then, with her head on his shoulder: “You’ll _never_ let me regret it, will you, darling? You’ll never oblige me to punish you again, dearest, will you? Oh, it hurt _me_ far worse to _see_ your pain than it did you to—to—feel it!” On the other side of the partition, _Mr. Grinnidge’s_ pipe falls from his lips, parted in slumber, and shivers to atoms on the register. “Oh!” _She_ flies at the register with a shriek of dismay, and is about to close it. “That wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!” _He_, preventing her: “What wretch? Where?” _She_: “Don’t you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?”