I rise up abruptly, trundling poor Vick, to whom this reverse is quite unexpected, down on the carpet, and rushing out of the room.
* * * * * It is evening now--late evening, drawing toward bedtime.

I am sitting with my back to the light, and have asked for a shade for the lamp, on the plea that the wind has cut my eyes--but, in spite of my precautions, I am well aware that the disfigurement of my face is still unmistakably evident to the most casual eye; and, from the anxious care with which Barbara looks _away from me_, when she addresses me, I can perceive that she has observed it, as, indeed, how could she fail to do?
If Tou Tou were here, she would overwhelm me with officious questions--would stare me crazy, but Barbara averts her eyes, and asks nothing.
We have been sitting in perfect silence for a long while; no noise but the click of Barbara's knitting-pins, the low flutter of the fire-flame, and the sort of suppressed choked _inward_ bark, with which Vick attacks a phantom tomcat in her dreams.
Suddenly I speak.
"Barbara!" say I, with a hard, forced laugh, "I am going to ask you a silly question: tell me, did you ever observe--has it ever struck you that there was something rather--rather _offensive_ in my manner to men ?" Her knitting drops into her lap.

Her blue eyes open wide, like dog-violets in the sun; she is _obliged_ to look at me now.
"_Offensive!_" she echoes, with an accent of the most utter surprise and mystification.

"Good Heavens, no! What has come to the child?
Oh!"-- (with a little look of dawning intelligence)--"I see! You mean, do not you smite them too much?
Are not you sometimes a little too _hard_ upon them ?" "No," say I, gravely; "I did not mean that." She looks at me for explanation, but I can give none.

More silence.
Vick is either in hot pursuit of, or hot flight from, the tomcat; all her four legs are quivering and kicking in a mimic gallop.
"Do you remember," say I, again speaking, and again prefacing my words by an uneasy laugh, "how the boys at home used always to laugh at me, because I never knew how to flirt, nor had any pretty ways?
Do you think"-- (speaking slowly and hesitatingly)--"that boys--one's brothers, I mean--would be good judges of that sort of thing ?" "As good as any one else's brothers, I suppose," she says, with a low laugh, but still looking puzzled; "but why do you ask ?" "I do not know," reply I, trying to speak carelessly; "it came into my head." "Has any one been accusing you ?" she says, a little curiously, "But no! who _could_?
You have seen no one, not even--" "No, no!" interrupt I, shrinking from the sound of the name that I know is coming; "of course not; no one!" The clock strikes eleven, and wakes Vick.