rather marry any woman than refuse her to her face. You see, no graceful way for a man to say 'no' has ever been discovered."

"Why, you poor defenseless creatures!" said Christine. "I'll teach you some ways immediately. I couldn't bear to think of your going about a prey to the first woman who proposed to you. Let us begin our lessons immediately. Have I your attention?"

"Completely."

"Let me see. In the first place there are several general types of proposal. There is the calmly rational, the passionate whirlwind, the dangerously controlled, or volcano under a sheet of ice—" she broke off. "I don't know how women do it," she said. "I only know about men."

He smiled, "But you admit to knowing all about them, I gather?"

It would have been folly to deny it.

"And then there's the meltingly pathetic," she went on. "I imagine that's what women attempt oftenest. Let us begin with that. Now you are to suppose that I, with tears streaming down my face, have just confessed that I have always looked up to you as a sort of god, that I hardly dare—"

"Wait, wait!" cried Riatt. "This is by far the most interesting part of the lesson, and you go so fast. I have no imagination. I don't know how it would be, you must say all those things."

"Do I have to cry?" said Christine.

Riatt debated the point.

"No," he answered at length, "I can imagine the tears, but everything else you must act out. Particularly that part about my seeming like a god to you."

"But how in the world can I teach you what to do, if I have to act a part myself?"

"Well, before we begin, just give me a sketch of what I ought to do."

"You must be very cold and firm, and explain to me that though my mistake is natural, you are really not a god at all; and then that gives you an excuse to talk a great deal about yourself, and tell how wicked and human and splendid you are, and that you are not worthy of a simple, good girl like myself, and how you don't love me anyhow. And then the essential thing is to go away quickly, and end the interview before I have a chance to begin all over again."

He looked doubtfully at the snow.

"Must I get out and walk home?" he asked.

"No," she said. "I think that's too complicated. We might try an easier one to begin. Suppose we do the calmly rational first. I explain to you that I have watched you from boyhood, and have come to the conclusion that our tastes, our intellects, our—"

"Oh, no," said Riatt, "there's really no use in going on with that. Even
I should have no difficulty with any lady who approached me in that way.
But there was one of the others that sounded rather promising and
difficult. How about the passionate whirlwind? I say to try that next."

To her surprise, Christine found herself coloring a little.

"Ah," she said, laying her hand on her lips and shaking her head, "that's very difficult, because you see, it really can't be imitated—"

"Can't be imitated!" cried Max. "Why, what sort of a teacher are you? I believe you don't know your job. You are the sort of teacher who would tell an arithmetic class that long division could not be imitated. I believe the trouble with you is that you don't understand the passionate whirlwind yourself. I believe you're a fraud, and I shall have your license to teach taken away from you. Can't be imitated! Well, let me see you try, at least."

Christine felt that he had the better of her, but she said firmly:

"Are you teaching this subject, or am I?"

"Certainly you can't think you are. But if you say so, I'll have a try."

Not sorry to create a diversion, Christine looked about her, and was more diverted from the subject in hand than she had expected to be.

They were on the wrong road. What with the snow and the fact that she had been so busy talking that she really had no idea how far they had been, it took her a moment to orient herself anew. She told him with a conscience-struck look.

"And you," said Riatt, "who do not even know the road to your own house, were volunteering to pilot me through an emotional crisis."

Even a suggestion of adverse criticism was unpleasant to Miss Fenimer.
She was not accustomed to it; and she answered with some sharpness:

"Yes, but the road is real, whereas I understand your embarrassment through the attentions of ladies is purely fictitious."

Riatt wondered how fictitious, but he turned the cutter about in obedience to her commands. The horse started forward even more gaily, under the impression that he was going home. But for the drivers, the change was not so agreeable. A high wind had come up, the snow was falling faster, and the light of the winter afternoon, already beginning to fade, was obscured by high, dark, silver-edged banks of clouds.

"Upon my word," said Riatt, "I think we had better go back."

"It's only a little way from here," Christine answered, trying hard to think how far it really was. She did want to get her father's coat, but she was not indifferent to the triumph of making Riatt late for dinner, and leaving Nancy Almar throughout the afternoon with no companion but Wickham or Jack Ussher.

The wind cut their faces, the horse pulled and pranced, the gaiety had gone out of their little expedition. They drove on a mile or so, and then Riatt stopped the horse.

"We've got to go back, Miss Fenimer," he said firmly.

"Oh, please not, Mr. Riatt; we are almost there, and," she added with a fine sense of filial obligation, "I really feel I must do as my father asked me."

Riatt felt inclined to point out that she, with her muff held up to her face, was not making the greatest sacrifice to the ideal of duty.

"Have you any very clear idea where your house is?" he asked. His tone was not flattering, and Christine was quick to feel it.

"Do I know where I live five months of the year?" she returned. "Of course I do. It's just over this next hill."

The afternoon was turning out so perversely that she would hardly have been surprised to find that the house had disappeared from its accustomed place. But as they came over the crest, there it was, in a hollow between two hills, looking as summer houses do in winter, like a forlorn toy left out in the snow.

"But it's shut up," said Riatt. "There's no one in it."

"I have the keys to the back door."

He touched the horse for the first time with the whip, and they went jingling down the slope, in between the almost completely buried gateposts, and drew up before the kitchen door.

Miss Fenimer kicked her feet free from the rugs, jumped out, and from the recesses of her muff produced a key which she inserted in the lock.

"Now you won't be long, will you?" said Riatt, with more of command than persuasion in his tone.

It was a principle of life on the part of Christine that she never allowed any man to bully her; or perhaps, it would be more nearly just to say that she never intended to allow any man to do so until she herself became persuaded that he could, and with this object she always made the process look as difficult and dangerous as possible at the very beginning.

She looked back at him and smiled with irritating calm.

"I shall be just as long as is necessary," she replied, and so saying, she turned, or rather attempted to turn, the