of sweetness, growing in strength, and the monotonous buzzing of
the black honey-bees mingled with the drumming of the crickets, and the
flowing of the river, and the beating of her heart, and the rushing of her
blood. She leaned her fair head back against the great boulder, and said
in a voice that shook a little:

"Tell me about the snubbing."

"It was High Art. Three words--and I knew I'd behaved like a bounder of
the worst--I had to go back and get the other cab, with a broken front
window and a cabby...." He chuckled. "I've met red noses enough but you
could have seen that chap's glowing through the thickest fog that ever
blanketed Ludgate Hill and wrapped the Strand in greasy mystery. Don't
move, please!... There's a ray of sunshine touching your head that makes
your hair look the colour of a chestnut when the prickly green hull first
cracks to let it out. Or ... there's a rose grows on the pergola at home
at Foltlebarre Royal, with a coppery sheen on the young leaves.... I
wondered why I kept thinking of it as I looked at you. But I know now. And
your skin is creamy white like the flower. Oh, if I could only gather the
girl-rose and carry it home to the others!"

She was pink as the loveliest La France now.

"You ought not to talk to me in that way."

"Don't I know it?" Beauvayse groaned out. He turned over upon his face in
the grass, and lay quite still. A shuddering sigh heaved the strong young
shoulders from time to time, and his hands clenched and tore at the
grasses, "Don't I know it? Lynette, Lynette!"

She longed to touch the close-cropped golden head. Unseen by him, she
stretched out a hand timidly and drew it back again, unsatisfied.

"Lynette, Lynette! I'm paying at this moment for every rotten act of
headlong folly I've ever committed in my life, and you're making me!" He
caught at a fold of her skirt and drew it to him and hid his face in it,
kissing it again and again. It was one of the caresses she had been used
herself to offer where she most loved. To find yourself being worshipped
instead of worshipping is an experience. She touched the golden head now,
as the Mother had often touched her own. He caught the hand.

"No, no!" She grew deadly pale, and shivered. "Please let me go. I--I did
not----"

She tried to release the hand. He raised himself, and she started at the
warm, quivering pressure of his beautiful mouth, scarcely shaded by the
young, wheat-golden moustache, upon her cool, sw