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MISS GALBRAITH, indignantly: “How can you insult me by supposing that I could be jealous of such a perfect little goose as that? No, Allen! Whatever I think of you, I still respect you too much for that.”

MR. RICHARDS: “I’m glad to hear that there are yet depths to which you think me incapable of descending, and that Miss Watervliet is one of them. I will now take a little higher ground. Perhaps you think I flirted with Mrs. Dawes. I thought, myself, that the thing might begin to have that appearance, but I give you my word of honor that as soon as the idea occurred to me, I dropped her–rather rudely, too. The trouble was, don’t you know, that I felt so perfectly safe with a MARRIED friend of yours. I couldn’t be hanging about you all the time, and I was afraid I might vex you if I went with the other girls; and I didn’t know what to do.”

MISS GALBRAITH: “I think you behaved rather silly, giggling so much with her. But” –

MR. RICHARDS: “I own it, I know it was silly. But” –

MISS GALBRAITH: “It wasn’t that; it wasn’t that!”

MR. RICHARDS: “Was it my forgetting to bring you those things from your mother?”

MISS GALBRAITH: “No!”

MR. RICHARDS: “Was it because I hadn’t given up smoking yet?”

MISS GALBRAITH: “You KNOW I never asked you to give up smoking. It was entirely your own proposition.”

MR. RICHARDS: “That’s true. That’s what made me so easy about it. I knew I could leave it off ANY time. Well, I will not disturb you any longer, Miss Galbraith.” He throws his overcoat across his arm, and takes up his travelling-bag. “I have failed to guess your fatal- -conundrum; and I have no longer any excuse for remaining. I am going into the smoking-car. Shall I send the porter to you for anything?”

MISS GALBRAITH: “No, thanks.” She puts up her handkerchief to her face.

MR. RICHARDS: “Lucy, do you send me away?”

MISS GALBRAITH, behind her handkerchief: “You were going, yourself.”

MR. RICHARDS, over his shoulder: “Shall I come back?”

MISS GALBRAITH: “I have no right to drive you from the car.”

MR. RICHARDS, coming back, and sitting down in the chair nearest her: “Lucy, dearest, tell me what’s the matter.”

MISS GALBRAITH: “O Allen! your not KNOWING makes it all the more hopeless and killing. It shows me that we MUST part; that you would go on, breaking my heart, and grinding me into the dust as long as we lived.” She sobs. “It shows me that you never understood me, and you never will. I know you’re good and kind and all that, but that only makes your not understanding me so much the worse. I do it quite as much for your sake as my own, Allen.”

MR. RICHARDS: “I’d much rather you wouldn’t put yourself out on my account.”

MISS GALBRAITH, without regarding him: “If you could mortify me before a whole roomful of people, as you did last night, what could I expect after marriage but continual insult?”

MR. RICHARDS, in amazement: “HOW did I mortify you? I thought that I treated you with all the tenderness and affection that a decent regard for the feelings of others would allow. I was ashamed to find I couldn’t keep away from you.”

MISS GALBRAITH: “Oh, you were ATTENTIVE enough, Allen; nobody denies that. Attentive enough in non-essentials. Oh, yes!”