and knelt to you; every time you have sat in that chair and
talked with me, I have worshipped you."

"It would not alter--all that," the girl said faintly, "if you kissed
me."

"I don't believe that; neither do you--no, you don't! In your heart of
hearts you admit that a woman like you is not kissed for the first and
last time by a man like me. Suppose I kissed you now? I should awaken
something in you as yet half asleep. You're young and pulsing with life,
and there are--thank Heaven!--few layers of that damnable young-girl
shyness over you. The world would call you primitive, I suppose."

"But I don't----"

"Oh, Lord, you must see it's all or nothing! You surely understand that
after I had left you you would not go against your morality, perhaps,
but you would adjust it, in spite of yourself, to meet your desires! I
cannot--safely--kiss you."

"But you are going away for good!"

"For good! Child, do you think my going will be your safeguard? If you
wanted me so much that you came to think it was right and good to want
me, wouldn't you find me, send for me, call for me? And I should come.
God! I can see the look in your eyes now, when the want had been
satisfied, and you could not drug your creed any more."

Her breath came in a long sigh. Then she tried to speak; tried again.

"It is so, isn't it?" he asked.

She nodded. Speech was too difficult. With the movement a strand of the
corn-gold hair came tumbling down the side of her face.

"Then, that being the case," said the man, with infinite gentleness, his
eyes on the little, tumbling lock, "I shall not attempt so much as to
touch your hand before you leave the room."

At the door she turned.

"Tell me once again," she said. "You _want_ to kiss me?"

He gripped the arms of his chair; from where she stood, she could see
the veins standing out on his hands.

"I want to kiss you," he said fiercely. "I want to kiss you. If there
were any way of cutting off to-morrow--all the to-morrows--with the
danger they hold for us--I would kiss you. I would kiss you, and kiss
you, and kiss you!"

II

Where her feet took her during the thousand, thousand years that was his
going she could never afterwards say; but she found herself at last at
the top of the great building, at an open window, leaning out, with the
rain beating into her eyes.

Far below her the lights wavered and later she remembered that echoes of
a far-off tumult had reached her as she sat. B