Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/141

 "Why? So you can fool them all by being excessively correct?"

She was delighted. "How did you guess?"

"The clue to you is always the same. You're a born actress."

To herself she was thinking. "Even the most enlightened men fail to understand that some women are capable of being the quintessence of themselves when they're most outrageously play-acting." And she was not at all sorry that Dare should fall into one of the traps laid for his sex,—there were so many he didn't fall into!

"I adore acting. And love being caught at it. And always go on till I am." This suggested a new thought to her. "That's why Keble and I are so often a hundred miles apart. I'm acting, and he doesn't know whether I'm acting myself or some other character, and that irritates me and I act all the harder, and it turns into farce or tragedy, and he still fails to catch me, and I'm too far gone in my rôle to stop, but yearn to be caught"

"And spanked?"

"You and Miriam spank me sometimes. Then Keble sees, and laughs. But so distressingly late."

"Hadn't we bettaer be starting?"

The procession had passed the Dixon ranch and was vanishing towards Hillside.

"In a minute," she replied, without stirring. "We don't have to have seen them, you know." Then with an abrupt change of mood she surprised him