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“I know it, Chang,” she answered, undaunted.

“Well, I know you haven’t fallen in love with me. You’ve simply fallen in love with love. Your imagination has been giddied by this little adventure that seems so romantic to you. And the day’ll come when you’ll thank me for having had the sense to understand you and to understand that my own strong liking for you isn’t love, either.”

“It’s what I call love,” said she, a solemn, wistful look in the eyes she fixed on him. “Don’t you miss me and think of me all the time when we aren’t together—just as I do? Don’t you come earlier and earlier—just as I do? Didn’t you fight against coming in the rain to-day, just as I did? Weren’t you dreadfully afraid you’d be disappointed, just as I was? And didn’t you simply have to come——”

He suddenly lost his temper. “This is too exasperating!” he cried. “I’ve done wrong to let you come here. I was innocent enough in it——”

“You couldn’t have kept me away,” she interrupted with a kind of childish glee. “The mischief was done the first day—over the chocolate. Wasn’t it, Chang?—honestly, wasn’t it?”