"I was eighteen years and a half. There is no mistake at all. We walked over to the city hall in the nearest town, and took out our license, and were married." "Very well. I will take you home to your father and mother, now; then see this man, myself. If there is indeed no flaw in the marriage and it cannot be annulled, a divorce must be arranged. Any money I have or expect to have would be a small price to set you free from the miserable business. But the first thing is to get you home. We will start now." She detained my hand when I would have signalled our waiter. Her eyes, shining and solemn as a small child's, met mine. "No, Cousin, please! I am not going home any more. At least, not alone. I asked you to bring me here where he is, because I am going to stay with my husband." "Never," I stated firmly. "Yes." "Not if I have to send for your father and take you home by force." "You cannot. I am of age." "Phillida, I am responsible for you to your parents tonight. Let me take you home, explain things to them, and then decide your course." "But that is what I most do not want to do!" she naively exclaimed. "You will not?" "I'm sorry. No." "Then I must see the man." "Not--hurt----?" I recalled the man we had just seen on the skating floor, with a qualm of quite unreasonable bitterness. That anxiety of Phillida's had a flavor of irony for me. "Hardly," I returned. "There are fortunately other means of persuasion than physical force." "Oh! But you cannot persuade him to give me up." I was silent. At which, being a woman, she grew troubled. "How could you?" she urged. "You have had no opportunity of judging what influence money has on some people, Phil." She laughed out in relief. "Is that all? Try, Cousin." "You trust him so much?" "In everything, forever!" "Then if I succeed in buying him off, promise me that you will come home with me." "If he takes money to leave me?" "Yes." "I should die. But I will promise if you want me to, because I know it never will happen. Just as I might promise to do anything, when I knew that I never would have to carry it out." "Very well," I accepted the best I could get. "I will go find him." "There is no need. He is coming here to our table as soon as he is free." "I will not have you seen with him in this place." "But I am going to stay here with him," she said. Her eyes, the meek eyes of Phillida, defied me. My faint authority was a sham. What could be done, I recognized, must be done through the man. We sat in silence, after that. Presently, her gaze fixed aslant on me as if to dare my interference, she drew up a thin gold chain that hung about her neck and ended beneath her blouse. From it she unfastened a wedding ring and gravely put the thing on her third finger, the school-girl romanticism of the gesture blended with an air of little-girl naughtiness. She looked more fit for a nursery than for this business.