“It’s what _I_ call love,” said she, a solemn, wistful look in the eyes she fixed on him. “Don’t you miss me and think of me all the time when we aren’t together--just as I do? Don’t you come earlier and earlier--just as I do? Didn’t you fight against coming in the rain to-day, just as I did? Weren’t you dreadfully afraid you’d be disappointed, just as I was? And didn’t you simply _have_ to come----” He suddenly lost his temper. “This is too exasperating!” he cried. “I’ve done wrong to let you come here. I was innocent enough in it----” “You couldn’t have kept me away,” she interrupted with a kind of childish glee. “The mischief was done the first day--over the chocolate. Wasn’t it, Chang?--honestly, wasn’t it?” “You’re a nice little girl, but----” She cut him off again: “If you knew how I fought that evening and night and all the next day and night--and how early I started out to find you. Had you begun to hunt for me?” “No,” said he, more curt than convincing. “Then what were you thinking about--that first morning down by the waterfall?” He flushed guiltily. Very poor, indeed, at all kinds of deception was Chang--except, possibly, self-deception. “I watched you for half an hour. You were sketching a face, Chang--instead of the waterfall. Whose face was it?” “Yours,” he admitted, as if the matter were of no consequence. With a smile of patient indulgence he went on: “Oh, if you’d had experience! But you haven’t. That’s why you’re carrying on like this. Now, listen to me, child----” “I like Rix better,” she interposed. “No matter,” he said, with a gesture of impatient brushing away. “I don’t love you. I won’t marry you. And you’ve got to stop proposing to me. I never heard of such vanity! What would people think of you?” “You’ve taught me not to mind what people think. You said you despised----” “No matter what I said! What will you think of yourself? What will _I_ think of you?” “Why, that I love you,” said she sweetly. He looked hopelessly at her, threw out his arms in a gesture of despair. “A baby--just a baby. Go home and grow up!” he cried, and strode swiftly away with a great swashing of the skirts of his long coat and a great swishing of the disturbed undergrowth of the wilderness. III A LESSON IN WOMAN Toward four the next afternoon Wade, at the studio, heard a knock on the door. He recognized it so promptly that one might almost have suspected he had been expecting it--or, would hoping for it be a more exactly accurate phrase? By way of answer he tiptoed across the floor, rested his full weight against the door, as there was no bolt, indeed no fastening of any kind but the unused outside bar and padlock. If that assault was to be repelled he must rely wholly upon his own unaided strength. He was not content with resting his weight; he braced himself and pushed. The knock came again--right between his shoulder-blades with only the inch plank between.