e kiss came into his mind, if eyes
were ever an index to be trusted. Trying to repress the words he yet
spoke on the subject, more to obtain assurance that what it had seemed
to imply was not true than from a wish to pry into bygones.

'Were you really engaged to be married to that lover?' he said, looking
straight forward at the sea again.

'Yes--but not exactly. Yet I think I was.'

'O Elfride, engaged to be married!' he murmured.

'It would have been called a--secret engagement, I suppose. But don't
look so disappointed; don't blame me.'

'No, no.'

'Why do you say "No, no," in such a way? Sweetly enough, but so barely?'

Knight made no direct reply to this. 'Elfride, I told you once,' he
said, following out his thoughts, 'that I never kissed a woman as a
sweetheart until I kissed you. A kiss is not much, I suppose, and it
happens to few young people to be able to avoid all blandishments
and attentions except from the one they afterwards marry. But I have
peculiar weaknesses, Elfride; and because I have led a peculiar life, I
must suffer for it, I suppose. I had hoped--well, what I had no right to
hope in connection with you. You naturally granted your former lover the
privileges you grant me.'

A 'yes' came from her like the last sad whisper of a breeze.

'And he used to kiss you--of course he did.'

'Yes.'

'And perhaps you allowed him a more free manner in his love-making than
I have shown in mine.'

'No, I did not.' This was rather more alertly spoken.

'But he adopted it without being allowed?'

'Yes.'

'How much I have made of you, Elfride, and how I have kept aloof!' said
Knight in deep and shaken tones. 'So many days and hours as I have hoped
in you--I have feared to kiss you more than those two times. And he made
no scruples to...'

She crept closer to him and trembled as if with cold. Her dread that the
whole story, with random additions, would become known to him, caused
her manner to be so agitated that Knight was alarmed and perplexed into
stillness. The actual innocence which made her think so fearfully of
what, as the world goes, was not a great matter, magnified her apparent
guilt. It may have said to Knight that a woman who was so flurried in
the preliminaries must have a dreadful sequel to her tale.

'I know,' continued Knight, with an indescribable drag of manner and
intonation,--'I know I am absurdly scrupulous about you--that I want you
too exclusively mine. In your past bef