forget it, laugh at it; but if I give you a man's love, take care."

This odd drama--girl and woman, boy and maturing man--held the stage; now
one, now the other.

"Take care, indeed!" she said, repeating his words and turning on him
with sudden ungraciousness, "I think we have had enough of this
nonsense."

She was in fact the more disturbed of the two, and knowing it let anger
loose to chase away she knew not what, which was troubling her with
emotion she could neither entirely control nor explain later as the
result of what seemed to her mere foolishness. If he was himself
disturbed by his storm of primitive passion, he did not show it as she
did.

"Yes," he said in reply, "we have had for the present enough of
this--enough talk, I mean--"

"We!" she exclaimed.

"Leila! do you want me to apologize?"

"No."

"Then--let us get those roses for Aunt Ann--what are left of them."

She was glad to escape further discussion--not sure of her capacity to
keep in order this cousin who was now so young and now so alarmingly old.
His abrupt use of self-control she recognised--liked and then disliked,