the sort of frock she thought he'd like and come down-stairs in it in
answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn't say, as
otherwise she would have done, "How did it come out, Roddy? Did you
win?"

In the light of her newly-acquired knowledge, she could see how a
question of that sort would irritate him. Instead of that, she said:
"You dear old boy, how dog tired you must be! How do you think it went?
Do you think you impressed them? I bet you did."

And not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held
her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her
she was a trump.

"I had a sort of uneasy feeling," he confessed, "that after last
night--the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I'd find
you--tragic. I might have known I could count on you. Lord, but it's
good to have you like this! Is there anywhere we have got to go? Or can
we just stay home?"

He didn't want to flounder through an emotional morass, you see. A firm
smooth-bearing surface, that was what, for every-day use, he wanted her
to provide him with; lightly given, casual caresses that could be
accepted with a smile, pleasantness, a confident security that she
wouldn't be "tragic." And on the assumption that she couldn't walk
beside him on the main path of his life, it was just and sensible. But
it wasn't good enough for Rose.

So the very next morning, she stripped the cover off the first of the
books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She