her. "No, I couldn't harm
her," he told himself. "I'm not such a dog as that. But there's
no harm in loving her and kissing her and making her as happy as
it's right to be."

"Don't be mean, Susan," he begged, tears in his eyes. "If you
love me, you'll let me kiss you."

And she yielded, and the shock of the kiss set both to
trembling. It appealed to his vanity, it heightened his own
agitations to see how pale she had grown and how her rounded
bosom rose and fell in the wild tumult of her emotions. "Oh, I
can't do without seeing you," she cried. "And Aunt Fanny has
forbidden me."

"I thought so!" exclaimed he. "I did what I could last night to
throw them off the track. If Ruth had only known what I was
thinking about all the time. Where were you?"

"Upstairs--on the balcony."

"I felt it," he declared. "And when she sang love songs I could
hardly keep from rushing up to you. Susie, we _must_ see each other."

"I can come here, almost any day."

"But people'd soon find out--and they'd say all sorts of things.
And your uncle and aunt would hear."

There was no disputing anything so obvious.

"Couldn't you come down tonight, after the others are in bed and
the house is quiet?" he suggested.

She hesitated before the deception, though she felt that her family
had forfeited the right to control her. But love, being the supreme
necessity, conquered. "For a few minutes," she conceded.

She had been absorbed; but his eyes, kept alert by his
conventional soul, had seen several people at a distance
observing without seeming to do so. "We must separate," he now
said. "You see, Susie, we mustn't be gossiped about. You know
how determined they are to keep us apart."

"Yes--yes," she eagerly agreed. "Will you go first, or shall I?"

"You go--the way you came. I'll jump the brook down where it's
narrow and cut across and into our place by the back way. What
time tonight?"

"Arthur's coming," reflected Susie aloud. "Ruth'll not let him
stay late. She'll be sleepy and will go straight to bed. About
half past ten. If I'm not on the front veranda--no, the side
veranda--by eleven, you'll know something has prevented."

"But you'll surely come?"

"I'll come." And it both thrilled and alarmed him to see how
much in earnest she was. But he looked love into her loving eyes
and went away, too intoxicated to care whither this adventure
was leading him.

At dinner she felt she was no longer a par