“I came down to say some pretty sharp things to you,” he went on. “But, now that I’m with you, I don’t seem able to get them out. But they’re there all the same, Beatrice, and I’ll act on ’em when I get away. I’m sure I will.” “Well?” said she. An expert in woman’s ways would have gathered from the accent she put into the word and from her accompanying manner that this young woman had decided the time had come to make it easy for Hanky to unburden himself. “You’re not treating me right,” he burst out. “You don’t give me the--the respect that everybody else does; the--the consideration that I’ve been used to.” “For instance?” Peter walked in silence beside her for some distance; these matters of which his sense of personal dignity was compelling him to complain were difficult to put into words that would not sound priggish and conceited. Finally, he made a beginning: “Of course, you’re a splendid girl--the best I know--and that’s the reason I want you. There isn’t anybody else who combines all the advantages as you do. But--honestly, Beatrice, isn’t the same thing true of me?” He looked at her, with his mind and his face ready to resent evidences of her familiar mockery. But she was gazing ahead, eyes serious and sweet mouth free from any hint of a smile. “Go on, Hanky,” said she encouragingly. Peter felt that at last he was coming into his own. With a great deal more confidence he proceeded: “You make me feel as if--as if I were cheapening myself--hanging after you this way, taking things off you I wouldn’t take off anybody else on earth.” “For instance?” “Why, this engagement. There’s hardly a girl in New York--in our set--who wouldn’t jump at the chance. That isn’t conceit. It’s fact.” “It’s both, Hanky,” conceded the girl, without reserve. She looked at him, asked gravely: “Do you really want to marry me?” “Haven’t I told you?” “When I don’t love you?” “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Peter, with a notable air of experienced man of the world. “And it seems to me you’re only showing what a fine girl you are. I’d be inclined to shy off from a girl who loved me before we were married. I like delicacy--and--and reserve--and purity--in a--a _lady_. By Jove, it seems to me there’s something kind of--of brazen and forward in a girl’s giving way to her feelings--when--when--she’s not supposed to know about that kind of thing. It’s--it’s--well, it smacks of the lower classes. They go in for that sort of thing--they and the sort of women one doesn’t talk about.” A long silence followed this outburst of upper-class philosophy. Peter was revolving what he had said, with increasing admiration for his own acumen. As for Beatrice, after a fleeting smile of derision which he did not see, she resumed her own distinct line of thought. She looked at him several times--a scrutinizing look--a look of appeal--a look of doubt. Finally she said with some effort: “Peter--suppose I told you I loved another man?”