It was Slater & Slater's check for one thousand dollars, already indorsed and marked accepted. He held it out to her, determined. "You know I can't accept this," he said. But she was equally determined. "But you shall, and must!" Again he refused it, absolutely, proudly, she thought; and again she thrust it back on him. Then she saw that it was useless, and with that discovery a new trouble came to her. At last she made a suggestion that had fluttered to the ark of her indecision, like a dove with an olive-branch. "Let's take it and spend it--on our holiday! No, let's spend half of it; we can decide about the other half later on!" He stopped to consider her proposal, and as she saw him wavering she declared that she, like Mrs. Spaulding, would never take "no" for an answer. And so it was decided; and drawing on her gloves she reminded him of their ride. While the horses were being brought round she told him of her interview with her publisher--not all of it, but at least enough to show how she had succeeded in securing the terms she had first asked for. "What a wonderful little warrior you are!" he cried, taking her hand laughingly, but gratefully. He looked down at the frail little white fingers admiringly. "It ought to guide an empire!" he cried. But, strangely enough, she could not find it in her heart to share in his delight. Even the mention of the book, during all that day, in some manner distressed and worried her. "Those are far-off things and battles long ago," she said, as they started out, shrugging her little shoulders, as though to lift from them some burden of useless care. "This is the beginning of our holiday. You remember what you said: the fulness and color of life! So let's turn vagabond. Do you know," she continued, taking a tighter rein on her little chestnut mare, who was champing restively at her bit, "do you know, I don't believe you've enough of the rogue in you ever to make a poet!" "Try me!" he laughed, yet not altogether pleased. "You haven't enough of the dare-devil in your make-up. You are always too staid and English and respectable and self-contained. You ought to have more of the vagabond, the swashbuckler, more of the Villon!" "Is that," he asked, "your ideal of man?" "By no means!" "Then what is?" "My ideal"--she looked at him as she spoke--"my ideal is a man who, for a woman's sake, can stand up alone against the whole wide world!" "Try me!" he said again. As they turned into the Park she brooded joyously, hungrily, over that simple challenge, which might mean so little or so much. Try him! She wondered if he guessed how soon and how severely he might be tried. And she wondered, even more, just what would be the outcome of that test. The driving rain had ceased, but it was still a humid, gray afternoon with a fine mist hanging in the air. The Park was practically deserted, and the bridle-paths empty.