"Have you read it?" she asked. "Is it very clever? Can I understand it? Richard is so amiably sure I can." "It is well done," replied Tredennis, "and you will certainly understand it." "I am glad of that," she said, and sat still a moment, with eyes lowered. Then she spoke, rather suddenly. "Richard is very good to me," she said. "I ought to be very grateful to him. It is just like him to feel that what I think of such things is worth hearing. That is his affectionate, generous way. Of what value could my shallow little fancies be?--and yet I think he really believes they should carry weight. It is the most delightful flattery in the world." "It is your good fortune," said Tredennis, "to be able to say things well and with effect." "What!" she said, with a half-smile, "are you going to flatter me, too?" "No," he answered, grimly, "I am not going to flatter you." "You would find it a very good way," she answered. "We should get along much better, I assure you. Perhaps that is really what I have been resenting so long--that you show no facility for making amiable speeches." "I am afraid my facility lies in the opposite direction," he returned. "I have recovered my equilibrium sufficiently not to admit that," she said. When he went away, as he did shortly after, she followed him to the door of the room. "Was I very bad-tempered?" she said, softly. "If I was, suppose you forgive me before you go away--for the sake of the other Bertha." He took the hand she offered him, and looked down at it as it lay upon his big brown palm. It was feverish and still a little unsteady, though her manner was calm enough. "There is nothing to forgive," he answered. "If there was--this Bertha"--He checked himself, and ended abruptly. "I don't share your gift," he said. "I said my say as bluntly and offensively as possible, I suppose, and you had a right to be angry. It was all the worse done because I was in earnest." "So was I--for a moment," she said; "that was the trouble." And that was the end of it, though even when he dropped her hand and turned away, he was aware of her slender figure standing in the door-way, and of a faint, inexplicable shadow in the eyes that followed him. He went back to his quarters bitterly out of humor with himself. "A nice fellow I am to talk to women!" he said. "I have not lived the life to fit me for it. Military command makes a man authoritative. What right had I to seem to assume control over her? She's not used to that kind of thing, even from those who might be supposed to have the right to do it. Some one ought to have the right--though that has gone out of fashion, too, I suppose." Something like a groan burst from him as he laid his forehead upon his hands, resting his elbows on the table before him. "If a man loved her well enough," he said, "he might do it and never hurt her; but if she loved him perhaps there would be no need of it."