 have told me,« I insisted, with an accent of reproach.
»It was you who forbade him. He thought I ought to know.«
    She did not reply. She was so entirely charming in her confusion that I was
now prompted, as much by the desire to prolong the situation as by my original
curiosity, to importune her further.
    »Am I never to know? Will you never tell me?« I said.
    »It depends,« she answered, after a long pause.
    »On what?« I persisted.
    »Ah, you ask too much,« she replied. Then, raising to mine a face which
inscrutable eyes, flushed cheeks, and smiling lips combined to render perfectly
bewitching, she added, »What should you think if I said that it depended on -
yourself?«
    »On myself?« I echoed. »How can that possibly be?«
    »Mr. West, we are losing some charming music,« was her only reply to this,
and turning to the telephone, at a touch of her finger she set the air to
swaying to the rhythm of an adagio. After that she took good care that the music
should leave no opportunity for conversation. She kept her face averted from me,
and pretended to be absorbed in the airs, but that it was a mere pretense the
crimson tide standing at flood in her checks sufficiently betrayed.
    When at length she suggested that I might have heard all I cared to, for
that time, and we rose to leave the room, she came straight up to me and said,
without raising her eyes, »Mr. West, you say I have been good to you. I have not
been particularly so, but if you think I have, I want you to promise me that you
will not try again to make me tell you this thing you have asked to-night, and
that you will not try to find it out from any one else, - my father or mother,
for instance.«
    To such an appeal there was but one reply possible. »Forgive me for
distressing you. Of course I will promise,« I said. »I would never have asked
you if I had fancied it could distress you. But do you blame me for being
curious?«
    »I do not blame you at all.«
    »And some time,« I added, »if I do not tease you, you may tell me of your
own accord. May I not hope so?«
    »Perhaps,« she murmured.
    »Only
