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290 have the right to come to you." She brought her warm, brilliant-tinted face close. "Make not coquette contre moi to-night, Dick," she said. "Leave that so small thing for a woman."

Dick winced involuntarily. This thing which he would have to do was so pitiably small that it was going to take him all his powers to go through with it. For Grange's Andree would not be bound by any of the ordinary conventions which rule women. She was leaning on him, laughing, and holding his hand against her with those two long slender ones of hers. And her dark eyes held the light of all the stars.

"I did kiss you and kiss you till I did kiss you awake," she said gleefully. "I did never think it so nice to kiss before—except Moosta's babies. But you are much more better than Moosta's babies, Dick."

Dick would have known how to meet other women in like case. It was possible that he had had practise. But he was unsure with Grange's Andree.

"Thank you, Andree. But you must not kiss me any more."

"Pourquoi?"

"Because—well, because we have finished the game we were playing, my dear. It was just un petit brin de cour, Andree. Didn't you know that?"

She hated him to use French to her. It reminded her of her breedlike limitation, and he knew it. "A flirtation," she said slowly. "A flirtation. Bien! C'est bon assez. Kiss me, Dick."

She put her lips up, but he did not meet them. While those kisses meant nothing to her he had not considered that they mattered. He looked at her with his eyes dark, and something woke in him that had not troubled him for years. He fought it impatiently for a moment. Then he obeyed it.

"No," he said, and pushed "his chair back, and stood up. "I shall never kiss you any more, Andree. Get up and go home."

She came to her feet in one little movement, standing still with her hands hanging.

"I do not understand," she said. "You did make my