I think you're making too much of it." "You were dallying there in the park, in a way to attract attention, with a headstrong, silly girl that you ought to have protected from that sort of thing.

You know better than that." Allen, enfolded in his long ulster, shuffled his feet on the tiling like a school-boy in disgrace.

Deep down in his heart, Harwood did not believe that Allen had proposed the walk to Marian; it was far likelier that Marian had sought the meeting by note or telephone.

He turned upon Allen with a slight relaxation of his sternness.
"You didn't write her a note or telephone her,--you didn't do either, did you ?" Allen, silent and dejected, dropped his gloves and picked them up, the color deepening in his cheeks.
"I just happened to meet her; that's all," he said, avoiding Dan's eyes.
"She wrote you a note or telephoned you ?" Silence.
"Humph," grunted Harwood.
"She's wonderfully beautiful and strong and so tremendously vivid! I think those nice girls you read of in the Greek mythology must have been like that," murmured Allen, sighing heavily.
"I dare say they were!" snapped Harwood, searching the youngster's thin, sensitive face, and meeting for an instant his dreamy eyes.

He was touched anew by the pathos in the boy, whose nature was a light web of finespun golden cords thrilling to any breath of fancy.