e beside him.

"Well, I'm here," she said, by way of beginning, looking up into his
face.

"I was looking for you in the other direction," he replied, throwing
away his half-burnt cigar. "I ought to have known better. You are always
doing the opposite of that which one expects."

A smile lit up her face for a moment, as she flashed her beautiful wide
eyes upon him. She seemed a part of that beauteous night, elfish and
delicate as a moonbeam or a flower, fragile as the song of a bird. He
could not speak, but stood drinking her in with his eyes and soul, his
face wearing a mixed expression of rapture and pain. She knew what he
felt, and like him, she, too, struggled with herself for the mastery of
her emotion.

"Do you know," she said at length, "this is the first time I have ever
been guilty of a clandestine meeting with a man. If my father knew I was
here, he would be beside himself."

"Then you did want to come!" he exclaimed.

"Of course. Otherwise, why should I be here?" she responded shyly,
raising her eyes to his for an instant and then lowering them again.

"Bessie!" he cried, starting toward her.

"Hush!" she said, raising her hand in protest and checking him. Had he
taken her in his arms then and there, she would have surrendered without
a struggle, for she was in that soft, languid mood of a woman in love in
spite of herself. But he dared not give way to his impulse. He loved her
too much, and feared lest his impetuosity might ruin forever his chance
of winning her.

"I know it was foolish of me to come, especially when there was no
reason for it," she continued with assumed indifference, casting a
sidelong glance at him out of the corners of her eyes. In spite of the
pain she knew she inflicted, she could not resist flirting with him just
a little even at such a moment. It filled her with such exquisite joy to
feel anew the power she exercised over him and the unfathomable depth of
his love which each fresh thrust at his heart revealed to her.

"I came here," she slowly resumed, "to ask what you think of Chiquita?"

"Think!" he burst forth savagely, aroused almost to a pitch of
desperation by her irritating manner. "Do you take me for as big a fool
as Don Felipe, or--" your father? he was about to add, but checked
himself just in time. "When one has known Chiquita as long as I have,
you don't think things about her, you know. Don Felipe," he went on,
"reminds me of the naughty little boy who one d