f the matter must be
kept from his ears, and his robust confidence in the world's admiration
of him preserved.

"You say you know me so well," she said. "I know very, very little of
you; and of what I know there's a lot that's bad."

He was not in the temper that had inspired his confession of bad manners
and bad morals on Duty Hill. He was inclined, as at such a moment he
might be pardonably, to make light of his faults. He was not alarmed when
she declared that if she found out anything very bad she would not after
all become his wife.

"At any moment that you repent, you're free," he said gaily. But she
answered gravely,

"There'll be a great many moments when I shall repent. You see I don't
think I really love you." He looked puzzled. "You know what I mean? Real
love is so beautifully undiscriminating, isn't it? I'm not a bit
undiscriminating about you; and that'll make me miserable often; it'll
make you angry too. You'll forget that I said all this, that I told you
and warned you. I shall be (she smiled again for a moment) a critic on
the hearth. And nobody hardly understands criticism as badly as you do."

"What a lot of reasons for refusing me!" he said, still gay, though with
a hint of disturbance in his manner. "And yet you don't refuse."

The old answer which was all she could give to herself was all that she
found herself able to give him.

"Somehow I can't do without you, you see," she said. Then she suddenly
leant forward and went on in a low imploring voice, "Don't be worse than
I've ever thought. There are some things I couldn't stand. Please don't."
Her eyes, fixed on to his, prayed a reassurance against a horde of vague
dangers.

He laughed off the question, not understanding how or why she came to put
it, and their talk passed to a lighter vein. But presently he said, with
a half-embarrassed, half-vexed laugh, "Need we sit so far from one
another?"

May had suffered from a dread of the beginning of sentiment. But she was
laughing as she rose and, crossing the room, sat down by him on the sofa.
"Here I am then," she said, "and you may kiss me. And if you will ask me
I'll kiss you; only I don't particularly want to, you know. I don't think
of you in the very least as a man to be kissed. I've thought of other men
much more in that way--oh, only thought of them, Mr. Quisante!"

The playful, yet not meaningless, defiance of a softer mood, and of his
power to induce it in her, acted as a spark to