In the tense sweet earnestness of her up turned face, the eager, unconscious nearness of her occasional gesture, the far remoteness of her subject, the sting of the winter night, the glare of electric light over all, it dawned on the Young Doctor a bit startlingly that he was frowning down into the eyes of a particularly beautiful woman, and for some quite unreasonable reason his cheeks began suddenly to burn like fire. It was as though having all his life long for one conscientious reason or another denied himself "wine when it was red," he found himself now, most humiliatingly, with ice itself going to his head. And just because he was so thoroughly unaccustomed to having anything go to his head, it went quite 66uproariously in fact, changing for that one moment his whole facial expression. And the instant his facial expression was changed of course he looked like a different man. And the instant he looked like a different man of course he began to act like a different man.
"And does this wonderful theory of yours apply only to poor little children?" he asked with slightly narrowing eyes. "Or am I to infer?" he laughed. "Or am I to infer that after a whole year of flaunting city, a whole year of barren indifference to it, my amazing gravitation to you this evening is positive Montessori proof that with you and you only rests my life's best salvation?"
Then without the slightest intent of doing it, without even the slightest warning to himself that he was going to do it, he swooped down suddenly and kissed her on her lips.
With a little gasp of dismay the girl stumbled to her feet. There was nothing blonde now about her. Towering up on the step just above him she was like a young storm-cloud all flame and shadow!
"Oh, what have I done that you should act thus?" she demanded. With the tears streaming 67down her face she lashed him with furious accusations. "You are one of these devils!" she cried. "You are a wild persons! Was it my fault?" she demanded, "that my bundles burst from the car? Was it my fault," she demanded, "that restaurants cannot block foolish women from their food? Was it my fault that I paid for your stupid supper?"
Neither defending himself nor seeking relief in flight, but with a face fully if not indeed more shocked than hers the Young Doctor sank down on the step at her feet, and with his head in his hands sat rocking himself to and fro.
"No, it isn't your fault!" he assured her and reassured her. "Nor is it exactly my fault!" he insisted. "But the fault of that damned piano!"
"The fault of that damned what?" quoted the girl a bit stridently.
But the face that lifted to hers was frankly the face of a stricken man. Only a chill added to repentance could have altered so any human countenance.
"On the honor of a man freezing to death!" he attested. "There is no blame to 68be attached to anything in the world— except to a grand piano."