Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/151

 delicious nearness. "You're standing on your tiptoes, and your hair's piled on top of your head."

"Maybe you are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance. And then she said, with a ripple of mirth: "You are taller than I am—I give up; I won't go to Morris's."

Cleggett, to tell the truth, was a bit relieved at the measurement. He was of the middle height; she was slightly taller than the average woman; he had really thought she might prove taller than he. He could scarcely have told why he considered the point important.

But after the quarrel she looked at Cleggett with a new and more approving gaze. Neither of them quite realized it, but she had challenged his ability to dominate her, and she had been worsted; he had unconsciously met and satisfied in her that subtle inherent craving for domination which all women possess and so few will admit the possession of.

Cleggett started across the sands toward Morris's with an automatic pistol slung in a shoulder holster under his left arm and a sword cane in his hand. He paused a moment by the scene of the explosion of the night before, but daylight told