e, perhaps, you aren't
really fond of me at all, in spite of all you have said. Never mind.
Don't put yourself out. It was merely a passing fancy on my part."

"Oh, don't let it pass," exclaims her lover, anxiously. "Darling _life_,
don't you know I have been longing, _longing_ to kiss you for weeks
past, yet dared not, because something in your eyes forbade me? And now,
to have you of your own accord really willing to give my dear desire
seems too much."

"Are you sure that it is that, or----"

"My angel, what a question!"

"Yet perhaps you think----Don't kiss me just to oblige me, you know. I
don't care so much about it as all _that_, but----"

She finds it impossible to finish the sentence, because----

* * * * *

Dexterously, but gently, she draws herself away from him, and stands a
little apart. Looking at her, he can see she is troubled. He has opened
his lips to speak, but by a gesture she restrains him.

"I know it now," she says. This oracular speech is accompanied by a
blush, vivid as it is angry, and there are large tears in her eyes. "I
should not have asked _you_ to kiss _me_. That was your part, and you
have taught me that I usurped it. Yet I thought only that I was fond of
you, that you were my friend, or like Terry, or--" here the grievance
gains sound, "you _should_ not have kissed me like that."

"You didn't suppose I was going to kiss you as Terry might?" asks he,
with just indignation. "He is your brother; I am--not."

"I don't know anything about it, except this, that it will be a very
long time before you have the chance of doing it again. I can't bear
being _hugged_."

"I am very sorry," says Mr. Desmond, stiffly. "Let me assure you,
however, that I shall never cause you such offence again until you wish
it."

"Then say never at once," says Monica, with a pout.

"Very good," says Desmond. It may now be reasonably supposed that he has
met all her requirements, and that she has no further complaints to
bring forward; but such is not the case.

"I don't like you when you talk to me like that," she says,
aggressively, and with a spoiled-child air, glancing at him from under
her sweeping lashes.

"How am I to talk to you, then?" asks he, in despair.

"You know very well how to talk to Miss Fitzgerald," retorts she,
provokingly, and with a bold attempt at a frown. Yet there is something
about her naughty little face, a hidden, mocking, mischievous, yet