"I was going to show you something
in a paper I am copying, and just in time I remembered that I had
particularly promised not to show it to anybody."
He regarded her curiously.
"But why," he asked, with a certain deliberateness which somehow made
her uneasy, "did you want to show it to me."
"Because--because--"
She could not equivocate, and her innocent soul had had little training
in the arts of evasion.
"Because what?"
Stanton leaned back in his chair, holding her by the shoulders as she
sat upon his knee, and searching her face with his strong brown eyes.
Milly's glance drooped.
"Don't ask me, John," she responded, putting her hand against his
cheek, wistfully. "Don't you see I couldn't tell you without letting
you know what is in the paper, and that is precisely the thing I
promised not to do."
There are few men in whom a woman's open refusal to yield a point, no
matter how trifling, does not arouse a tyrannous masculine impulse to
compel obedience. Stanton had really no great curiosity about the
secret, whatever it might be, but he instinctively felt that it was
right to demand the telling because his betrothed refused to speak. His
face grew more grave. The hands upon Milly's shoulders unconsciously
tightened their hold. The girl intuitively felt that a struggle was
coming, although even yet the signs were hardly tangible.
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