beseechingly to hers.

"Will you let me?"

Daphne hid her hands. He drew himself to her side and took one of them
forcibly from her lap.

With a slow, caressing movement he began to braid the grass ring around
her finger--in and out, around and around, his fingers laced with her
fingers, his palm lying close upon her palm, his blood tingling through
the skin upon her blood. He made the braiding go wrong, and took it off
and began over again. Two or three times she drew a deep breath, and
stole a bewildered look at his face, which was so close to hers that his
hair brushed it--so close that she heard the quiver of his own breath.
Then all at once he folded his hands about hers with a quick, fierce
tenderness, and looked up at her. She turned her face aside and tried to
draw her hand away. His clasp tightened. She snatched it away, and got
up with a nervous laugh.

"Look at the butterflies! Aren't they pretty?"

He sprang up and tried to seize her hand again.

"You shan't go home yet!" he said, in an undertone.

"Shan't I?" she said, backing away from him. "Who's going to keep me?"

"_I am_," he said, laughing excitedly and following her closely.

"My father's coming!" she cried out as a warning.

He turned and looked: there was no one in sight.

"He _is_ coming--sooner or later!" she called.

She had retreated several yards off into the sunlight of the meadow.

The remembrance of the risk that he was causing her to run checked him.
He went over to her.

"When can I see you again--soon?"

He had never spoken so seriously to her before. He had never before been
so serious. But within the last hour Nature had been doing her work, and
its effect was immediate. His sincerity instantly conquered her. Her
eyes fell.

"No one has any right to keep us from seeing each other!" he insisted.
"We must settle that for ourselves."

Daphne made no reply.

"But we can't meet here any more--with people passing backward and
forward!" he continued rapidly and decisively. "What has happened to-day
mustn't happen again."

"No!" she replied, in a voice barely to be heard. "It must never happen
again. We can't meet here."

They were walking side by side now toward the meadow-path. As they
reached it he paused.

"Come to the back of the pasture--to-morrow!--at four o'clock!" he said,
tentatively, recklessly.

Daphne did not answer as she moved away from him along the path
homeward.

"Will you come?" he called out t