e when
you know about me," she whispered, and ended her words with a sob.

The man laughed triumphantly. "I don't want to marry you," he answered,
"I want to love you and make you for a little love me, and this is how I
begin the lesson." He bent his face to hers quickly, kissing her
passionately, fiercely, on the lips.

For a second such a tumult of passionate amazement shook Joan that she
stayed quiet in his arms. Then everything that was strong, all the
inherited purity in her nature, came to her aid and summoned her
fighting forces to resist. She struggled in his arms furiously, she had
not known she held such stores of strength; then she wrenched herself
free and stood up. Fear, if fear had been the cause of her early
discomfort, had certainly left her; it was blind, passionate rage that
held her silent before him.

The man rose to his feet and essayed a laugh, but it was rather a
strained effort. "That was a most undignified proceeding, Pierrette," he
said; "what on earth made you do it?"

"How dared you?" flamed Joan. "How dared you speak to me, touch me like
that?"

"Dared?" the man answered; he was watching her with mocking eyes and
something evil had come to life on his face. Cold anger that she should
have made a fool of him and a baulked passion which could very easily
turn to hate. "This outburst is surely a little ridiculous. What did
you think I wanted out of the game? Did it really occur to you that I
was going to ask you to marry me? My dear girl!" He shrugged his
shoulders, conveying by that movement a vast amount of contempt for her
dreams. "And as for the rest, I have never yet met a woman who objected
to being kissed, though some of them may pretend they do."

Joan stared at him; he had stooped and was gathering up the roses that
lay between them. Rage was creeping away from her and leaving her with a
dull sense of undignified defeat. Once again she had pitted the ideal of
a dream against a man's harsh reality, and lost. Love! She had dreamed
that this man loved her, she had held herself unworthy of the honour he
paid her. This was what his honour amounted to--"I have never yet met a
woman who objected to being kissed."

She turned away and walked blindly towards the house.

Landon caught her up before she reached the gate of the garden. His arms
were full of the roses and apparently he had won back to his usual good
nature.

"Having made ourselves thoroughly disagreeable to each other,"