she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful
of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing
phrases.

"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it
seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of
his lips. "There! you see you're crushing them!" She undid them, and
buttoning the coat, held them to her face. Their odour made her faint:
her eyes were clouded.

"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called
him so--getting free. "You must be sensible! some one might come along."

"I'll never get enough of you!" he said. "I can't believe it yet." And
added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside."

She shook her head. Something in her protested against this too public
advertisement of their love.

"I'd rather hold them," she answered. "Let's go on." He started the car
again. "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously. I've been thinking."

"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly. "If I could
only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! If you
keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. And now
do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just ready to
bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em."

"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain
something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the
proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before
she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which
she knew would return when she could be alone again. "I have to think
--you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile.

"Well, what is it?" he assented. "You might as well get it off now."

And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you.
I've told you the reasons. You're rich, and you have friends who wouldn't
understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand. I--I'm nothing,
I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy. I've never lived--in
the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you know, I
shouldn't know what to do."

He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously. His
smile was self-confident, exultant.

"Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said.

And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her
eyebrows.

"I mean it," she said. "I came