"And my gay lanterns?" danced Daphne.
"And your gay lanterns," smiled the man.
"And my money?" cried Daphne. "And my library?"
"And your everything," smiled the man.
With an absolutely elfish cry Daphne threw back her head and began to laugh.
"Oh, I'm not a bit afraid to go with you!" she laughed. "Maybe I ought to be! But I'm not! I'm not! Maybe it's because I'm too excited to be afraid! Maybe it's because," she flamed, "I am never going to be afraid of anything—ever any more! Oh, I'm an— awful kid," she paled and flamed again, "I don't even know just what marriage is! But—" Wild as the humor of nymph or faun the queer little cry burst from her lips again. "But I know I must never deceive you!" she cried. "I know that much at least! So— so maybe you won't want to take me," she cried, "when I tell you that Miss Claudia Merriwayne was the President who expelled me from college!"
"What?" snapped Sheridan Kaire. "The devil you say! What? 173 Oh, so that's why you were willing to come? Just to get even? Just to——Now I must have been some thick," he frowned, "not to have sized up that that was the bunch who expelled you from college. Thicker even than I thought I was! Seeing only your picture in the paper, sizing up only your name!" Then quite suddenly he put back his head and began to laugh. "Of all the comic operas!" he hooted. "Of all the Heaven-sent situations! We'll give them their old library or not just as you say," he hooted. "Well——" Then with a gesture that seemed to be all ardor and no gentleness he reached out and drew her back to him. "I don't care why you come," he cried, "as long as you come!"
"Oh, won't it be glorious," danced Daphne, "to surprise them so! I'm going to pull my hair way down over my face like this and this," she illustrated with eager fingers, "so that they won't know me at all until I'm ready—I'll look so wild!"
"Everything's going to be glorious!" said the man. "H-st! Here comes the launch!"
Like an excited child Daphne ran to meet it. Close at her 174 shoulder followed the man. Glancing back at him swiftly through the bright maze of her hair, a single challenge, half mischievous, half defiant, flashed from her lips and eyes.