“I haven’t avoided you,” said Cynthia.

“I’ve been looking for you all over town this morning,” said Bob, with pardonable exaggeration, “and I believe that idiot Somers has, too.”

“Then why should you call him an idiot?” Cynthia flashed.

Bob laughed.

“How you do catch a fellow up!” said he; admiringly.  “We both found out you’d gone out for a walk alone.”

“How did you find it out?”

“Well,” said Bob, hesitating, “we asked the colored doorkeeper.”

“Mr. Worthington,” said Cynthia, with an indignation that made him quail, “do you think it right to ask a doorkeeper to spy on my movements?”

“I’m sorry, Cynthia,” he gasped, “I—­I didn’t think of it that way—­and he won’t tell.  Desperate cases require desperate remedies, you know.”

But Cynthia was not appeased.

“If you wanted to see me,” she said, “why didn’t you send your card to my room, and I would have come to the parlor.”

“But I did send a note, and waited around all day.”

How was she to tell him that it was to the tone of the note she objected—­to the hint of a clandestine meeting?  She turned the light of her eyes full upon him.

“Would you have been content to see me in the parlor?” she asked.  “Did you mean to see me there?”

“Why, yes,” said he; “I would have given my head to see you anywhere, only—­”

“Only what?”

“Duncan might have came in and spoiled it.”

“Spoiled what?”

Bob fidgeted.

“Look here, Cynthia,” he said, “you’re not stupid—­far from it.  Of course you know a fellow would rather talk to you alone.”

“I should have been very glad to have seen Mr. Duncan, too.”

“You would, would you!” he exclaimed.  “I shouldn’t have thought that.”

“Isn’t he your friend?” asked Cynthia.

“Oh, yes,” said Bob, “and one of the best in the world.  Only—­I shouldn’t have thought you’d care to talk to him.”  And he looked around for fear the vigilant Mr. Duncan was already in the park and had discovered them.  Cynthia smiled, and immediately became grave again.

“So it was only on Mr. Duncan’s account that you didn’t ask me to come down to the parlor?” she said.

Bob was in a quandary.  He was a truthful person, and he had learned something of the world through his three years at Cambridge.  He had seen many young women, and many kinds of them.  But the girl beside him was such a mixture of innocence and astuteness that he was wholly at a loss how to deal with her—­how to parry her searching questions.

“Naturally—­I wanted to have you all to myself,” he said; “you ought to know that.”

Cynthia did not commit herself on this point.  She wished to go mercilessly to the root of the matter, but the notion of what this would imply prevented her.  Bob took advantage of her silence.