Marjorie gnashed her teeth, but Kathleen could not hear that. She gushed on: "And now we have met again! It looks like Fate, doesn't it?"
"It certainly does," Mallory assented, bitterly; then again, with zest: "Let me see that old bracelet, will you?"
He tried to lay hold of it, but Kathleen giggled coyly: "It's just an excuse to hold my hand." She swung her arm over the back of the seat coquettishly, and Marjorie made a desperate lunge at it, but missed, since Kathleen, finding that Mallory did not pursue the fugitive hand, brought it back at once and yielded it up:
"There—be careful, someone might look."
Mallory took her by the wrist in a gingerly manner, and said, "So that's the bracelet? Take it off, won't you?"
"Never!—it's wished on," Kathleen protested, sentimentally. "Don't you remember that evening in the moonlight?"
Mallory caught Marjorie's accusing eye and lost his head. He made a ferocious effort to snatch the bracelet off. When this onset failed, he had recourse to entreaty: "Just slip it off." Kathleen shook her head tantalizingly. Mallory urged more strenuously: "Please let me see it."
Kathleen shook her head with sophistication: "You'd never give it back. You'd pass it along to that—train-acquaintance."
"How can you think such a thing?" Mallory demurred, and once more made his appeal: "Please please, slip it off."
"What on earth makes you so anxious?" Kathleen demanded, with sudden suspicion. Mallory was stumped, till an inspiration came to him: "I'd like to—to get you a nicer one. That one isn't good enough for you."