Innocent

lightened up with the illumination of an inward mirth and mischief.

"Only because you look pretty!" she answered.

He threw aside her hand with an angry gesture of impatience.

"You want to make a fool of me!" he said, petulantly.

"I'm sure I don't! You are just lovely, and I tell you so. That is not making a fool of you!"

"Yes, it is! A man is never lovely. A woman may be."

"Well, I'm not," said Innocent, placidly. "That's why I admire the loveliness of others."

"You are lovely to me," he declared, passionately.

She smiled. There was a touch of compassion in the smile.

"Poor Robin!" she said.

At that moment the hidden goddess in her soul arose and asserted her claim to beauty. A rare indefinable charm of exquisite tenderness and fascination seemed to environ her small and delicate personality with an atmosphere of resistless attraction. The man beside her felt it, and his heart beat quickly with a thrilling hope of conquest.

"So you