ger, as though nerving himself for a
struggle--"tell me this." He leaves where he is standing and comes
closer to her. "Did--did you ever kiss Gower?"

"Never--_never_!" answers Dulce, growing quite pale.

"I have no right to ask it, I know that," says Roger. "But,"
desperately, "did he ever kiss _you_?"

"Never, indeed."

"Honor bright?"

"Honor bright."

A long silence. Miss Blount's fingers are quite deep in the water now,
and I think she does not even feel the cold of it.

"He has been engaged to you for three months and more and never wanted
to kiss you!" exclaims Roger at last, in a tone expressive of great
amazement and greater contempt.

"I don't think I said quite _that_," returns she, coloring faintly.

"Then"--eagerly--"it was _you_ prevented him!"

"I don't care much about that sort of thing," says Dulce, with a little
shrug.

"Don't you? Then I don't believe you care a button about _him_," replies
he, with glad conviction.

"That is mere surmise on your part. Different people"--vaguely--"are
different. I don't believe if I had any affection for a person that a
mere formal act like kissing would increase the feeling."

"Oh, wouldn't it, though!" says Mr. Dare--"that's all you know about it!
You just try it, that's all."

"Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind," says Dulce, with much
indignation, and some natural disappointment--that _he_ should recommend
such a course to her!

"I didn't mean that you should--should--I didn't, in the least, that you
should be a bit civiller to Gower, or any one, than you are _now_," says
Roger, hastily, greatly shocked at the construction she has put upon his
words, and rather puzzled for language in which to explain himself more
clearly. At this the cloud disappears from her pretty face, and she
bestows a smile upon him that at once restores him to equanimity.

"I can't say I think much of Gower as a lover," he says, after a while,
a touch of scorn in his voice. "To be engaged to you for three whole
months, and never once to kiss you."

"_You_ were engaged to me for three whole _years_," replies his cousin,
quietly, yet with a flash from her deep gray eyes that means much, "and
I cannot remember that you ever cared to kiss me _at all_."

This is a home-thrust.

"I don't know what was the matter with me then," he says, making no
attempt at denial, though there certainly were one or two occasions he
might have referred to; "I don't believe"--in a low t