sprang up the stairs and snatched the pot from the stove. "You must have stopped stirring it," he said.

"Oh, I didn't stir it!"

"What did you do?"

"You didn't tell me to stir it."

"I certainly did."

"No, you said just to watch it."

Riatt looked at her. "Well," he said, "I've heard of glances cutting like a knife, but never stirring like a spoon. If I were a really just man," he went on, "I'd make you eat that burnt mess for your supper, but I'm so absurdly indulgent that I'll share some of my bacon and biscuits with you."

His tone as well as his words were irritating to one not used to criticism in any form.

"I don't care for that sort of joke," she said.

"I wasn't aware of having made a joke."

"I mean your attitude as if I were a child that had been naughty."

"It wouldn't be so bad if you were a child."

"You consider me to blame because that wretched cereal chose to burn?"

"Emphatically I do."

"How perfectly preposterous," said Christine, and a sense of bitter injustice seethed within her. "Why in the world should I be expected to know how to cook?"

"I'm a little too busy at the moment to explain it to you," Riatt answered, "but I promise to take it up with you at a later date."

There was something that sounded almost like a threat in this. She turned away, and walking to the window stood staring out into the darkness. He was really quite a disagreeable young man, she thought. How true it was, that you couldn't tell what people were like when everything was going smoothly. She wondered if he would always be like that—trying to keep one up to one's duty and making one feel stupid and ignorant about the merest trifles.

"Well, this rich meal is ready," he said presently.

She turned around. The table was set—she couldn't help wondering where he had found the kitchen knives and forks—the bacon was sizzling, the tin of biscuits open, and the coffee bubbling and gurgling in its glass retort.

She sat down and began to eat in silence, but as she did so, she studied him furtively. She was used to many different kinds of masculine bad temper; her father's irritability whenever anything affected his personal comfort: and from other men all forms of jealousy and hurt feelings. But this stern indifference to her as a human being was something a little different. She decided on her method.

"Oh, dear," she said, "this meal couldn't be much drearier if we were married, could it?"

"Except," he returned, unsmilingly, "that then it would be one of a long series."

"Not as far as I'm concerned," she answered. "I should leave you on account of your bad temper."

"If I hadn't first left you on account of—"

"Of burning the cereal?"

"Of being so infernally irresponsible about it."

"Oh, that's the trouble, is it?" she said. "That I did not seem to care? Well, I assure you that I don't like burnt food any better than you do, but I have some self-control. I wouldn't spoil a whole evening just because—" A sudden inspiration came to her. Her voice failed her, and she hid her face in her pocket handkerchief.

Riatt leant back in his chair and looked at her, looked at least at the back of her long neck, and the twist of her golden hair and the occasional heave of her shoulders.

The strange and the humiliating thing was that she had just as much effect upon him when he quite obviously knew that she was insincere.

"Why," he said gently, "are you crying? Or perhaps I ought to say, why are you pretending to cry?"

She paid no attention to the latter part of his question.

"You're so unkind," she said, careful not to overdo a sob. "You don't seem to understand what a terrible situation this is for me."

"In what way is it terrible?"

"Don't you know that a story like this clings to a girl as long as she lives? That among the people I know there will always be gossip—"

"You're not serious?"

She nodded, still behind her handkerchief, "Yes, I am. This will be something I shall have to live down, as much as you would if you had robbed a bank."

She now raised her head, and wiping her eyes hard enough to make them a little red, she glanced at him.

Really she thought it would save a great deal of time and trouble, if he could just see the thing clearly and ask her to marry him now.

But apparently his mind did not work so quickly.

"Who will repeat it?" he said. "Not the Usshers—"

"Nancy Almar won't let it pass. She'll have found the evening dull without you, and she'll feel she has a right to compensation. And that worm, Wickham; it will be his favorite anecdote for the rest of his life. I was horrible to him last night at dinner."

"Sorry you were?"

"Not a bit. I'd do it again, but I may as well face the fact that he won't be eager to conceal his own social triumphs for the sake of my good name. Can't you hear him, 'Curious thing happened the other day—at my friends the Usshers'. Know them? A lovely country place—'—"

"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "What a bore! Is there anything I could do—"

"Well, there is one thing."

He looked up quickly. If ever terror flashed in a man's eyes, she saw it then in his. Her heart sank, but her mind worked none the less well.

"It's this," she went on smoothly. "There's a lodge, a sort of tool-house, only about half a mile down the road. Couldn't you take a lantern, couldn't you possibly spend the night there?"

"It isn't by any chance," he said, "that you're afraid of having me here?"

"Oh, no, not you," she answered. "No, I should feel much safer with you here than there." (If he went her case was ruined, and she was now actually afraid perhaps he would go.) "I should be terrified in this great place all by myself. Still, I think you ought to go. It's not so very far. You go down the road a little way and then turn to the right through the woods. I think you'll find it. The roof used to leak a little, but I dare say you won't mind that. There isn't any fireplace, but you could take lots of blankets—"

"I tell you what I'll do," he said. "No one will come to rescue us to-night. I'll sleep here to-night, and to-morrow as soon as it's light, I'll go to this cottage, and when they come, you can tell them any story you please. Will that do?"

It did perfectly. "Oh, thank you," she said. "How kind you are! And you do forgive me, don't you?"

"About the cereal? Oh, yes, on one condition."

"What is that?" She was still meltingly sweet.

"That you wash these dishes."

She felt inclined to box his ears. Had he seen through her all the time?

"I never washed a dish in my life," she observed thoughtfully.

"Have you ever done anything useful?"

She reflected, and after some thought she replied, not boastfully, but as one who states an indisputable fact: "Never."

He folded his arms, leant against the wall and looked down upon her. "I wish," he said, "if it isn't too much trouble that you would give me a detailed account of one of your average days."

"You talk," said she, "as if you were studying the manners and customs of