“Till--till I’m acclimatized, please.” Louis laughed uneasily. “And how do you suggest we should while away the time, until you’re--acclimatized, please?” “There are some books on that shelf. If you read to me, I could crochet, couldn’t I?” And with an air of innocent glee, she pulled out her work from her handbag. Louis slowly crossed the room to the bookshelf.... He could not be happy until he had ousted her from her lordship of the slippery situation, treating it and him in a spirit of dainty buffoonery; and for the moment, he, usually so nimble and astute at solving the woman riddle, was utterly bewildered by this elusive crescent-moon of a girl, slender and pale and swathed in flying clouds of mystery. Of course a woman _ought_ to be mysterious. It was part of her appeal, her stock-in-trade. Louis had no objection to the conventional Mystery of Woman. He had written sophisticated articles about it. But this Ursula Barrison---- He decided not to force the situation, but to give it time. “Here is a treatise on physical geography, a psalm-book, ‘Home Influence,’ ‘Happy Thoughts from Day to Day,’ ‘Pigs, the Care and Feeding of,’ and ‘Little Ellen’s Dream,’” he read, from the backs of the volumes on the shelf. “Which will interest you most?” And he began to read aloud, with very precise utterance, a passage from “Little Ellen’s Dream.” “Kind little Ellen could not bear to see the snow, because she had two pairs of shoes, and perhaps some poor little girl had none. ‘Mama darling,’ she cried, ‘if I am good, may I take my shoes as a present to Nelly Carter, and also some eggs and my nicest hoop? I dreamt that it was her birthday today and she cried because she had no presents.’ ‘Do, my darling,’ said Ellen’s mother----” Suddenly Ursula buried her head on to her folded arms and began to shake with sobs. Louis, interrupted in his efforts to entertain her, watched her for a few moments. Then he said, “You’re laughing!” And she raised a flushed face, its composure broken up into radiant quivering mirth. “It was your puzzled gloom--and that book--‘Kind little Ellen’ ... and us here in this absurd room.... The way you said ‘_Ursula_’ when you came in. No, I’m not in the very least hysterical.... I’m just amused.... If you would only stop expecting me to fall into your arms, you might be amused too.” “I think it unlikely,” said Louis. And Ursula, seeing a certain male look, hot and bulging, in his eyes, stopped laughing. She realized that now would come the strain on her boast that Louis must be managed.