o!" she cried again, putting her hands behind her back. "You will
spoil it!"

"I will not spoil it," he said, moving so close to her that his breath
was on her face, and reaching round to unclasp her hands.

"No! No! No!" she cried, bending away from him. "I don't want any ring!"
and she tore it from her finger and threw it out on the grass. Then she
got up, and, brushing the grass-seed off her lap, put on her hat.

He sat cross-legged on the grass before her. He had put on his hat, and
the brim hid his eyes.

"And you are not going to stay and talk to me?" he said in a tone of
reproachfulness, without looking up.

She was excited and weak and trembling, and so she put out her hand and
took hold of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging from a branch of
the thorn, and laid her cheek against her hand and looked away from him.

"I thought you were better than the others," he continued, with the
bitter wisdom of twenty years. "But you women are all alike. When a man
gets into trouble, you desert him. You hurry him on to the devil. I have
been turned out of the church, and now you are down on me. Oh, well! But
you know how much I have always liked you, Daphne."

It was not the first time he had acted this character. It had been a
favorite role. But Daphne had never seen the like. She was overwhelmed
with happiness that he cared so much for her; and to have him reproach
her for indifference, and see him suffering with the idea that she had
turned against him--that instantly changed the whole situation. He had
not heard then what had taken place at the dinner. Under the
circumstances, feeling certain that the secret of her love had not been
discovered, she grew emboldened to risk a little more.

So she turned toward him smiling, and swayed gently as she clung to the
vine.

"Yes; I have my orders not even to speak to you! Never again!" she said,
with the air of tantalizing.

"Then stay with me a while now," he said, and lifted slowly to her his
appealing face. She sat down, and screened herself with a little
feminine transparency.

"I can't stay long: it's going to rain!"

He cast a wicked glance at the sky from under his hat; there were a few
clouds on the horizon.

"And so you are never going to speak to me again?" he said mournfully.

"Never!" How delicious her laughter was.

"I'll put a ring on your finger to remember me by."

He lay over in the grass and pulled several stalks. Then he lifted his
eyes