"Go away, and don't bother me." He had put her into such an ill humor that when she came out, two hours later, her stormy brow, her gleaming hazel eyes showed she was "looking for trouble." He was still breakfastless--he well knew how to manipulate his weaknesses so that his purposes could cow them, could even use them.
He answered her lowering glance with a flash of his blue-green eyes like lightning from the dark head of a thunder-cloud.

"Do you know it is nine o'clock ?" demanded he.
"So early?
I try to get up late so that the days won't seem so long." He abandoned the field to her, and she thought him permanently beaten.
She had yet to learn the depths of his sagacity that never gave battle until the time was auspicious.
Two mornings later he returned to the attack.
"I see your light burning every night until midnight," said he--at breakfast with her, after the usual wait.
"I read myself to sleep," explained she.
"Do you think that's good for you ?" "I don't notice any ill effects." "You say your health doesn't improve as rapidly as you hoped." Check! She reddened with guilt and exasperation.

"What a sly trick!" thought she.

She answered him with a cold: "I always have read myself to sleep, and I fancy I always shall." "If you went to sleep earlier," observed he, his air unmistakably that of the victor conscious of victory, "you'd not keep me raging round two or three hours for breakfast." "How often I've asked you not to wait for me! I prefer to breakfast alone, anyhow.

It's the dreadful habit of breakfasting together that causes people to get on together so badly." "I'd not feel right," said he, moderately, but firmly, "if I didn't see you at breakfast." She sat silent--thinking.