"How is that possible, when, already I think I love you."

She started from him, and stared at him for a long moment. "You insult
me!" she cried angrily, conceiving that she understood his mind. "Do
you think that because I may have committed a folly I have forfeited all
claim to be respected--that I am a subject for insolent speeches?"

"You are illogical," said Mr. Caryll, the imperturbable. "I have told
you that I love you. Should I insult the woman I have said I love?"

"You love me?" She looked at him, her face very white in the white
moonlight, her lips parted, a kindling anger in her eyes. "Are you mad?"

"I a'n't sure. There have been moments when I have almost feared it.
This is not one of them."

"You wish me to think you serious?" She laughed a thought stridently in
her indignation. "I have known you just four hours," said she.

"Precisely the time I think I have loved you."

"You think?" she echoed scornfully. "Oh, you make that reservation! You
are not quite sure?"

"Can we be sure of anything?" he deprecated.

"Of some things," she answered icily. "And I am sure of one--that I am
beginning to understand you."

"I envy you. Since that is so, help me--of your charity!--to understand
myself."

"Then understand yourself for an impudent, fleering coxcomb," she flung
at him, and turned to leave him.

"That is not explanation," said Mr. Caryll thoughtfully. "It is mere
abuse."

"What else do you deserve?" she asked him over her shoulder. "That you
should have dared!" she withered him.

"To love you quite so suddenly?" he inquired, and misquoted: "'Whoever
loved at all, that loved not at first sight?' Hortensia!"

"You have not the right to my name, sir."

"Yet I offer you the right to mine," he answered, with humble reproach.

"You shall be punished," she promised him, and in high dudgeon left him.

"Punished? Oh, cruel! Can you then be--

"'Unsoft to him who's smooth to thee?
Tigers and bears, I've heard some say,
For proffered love will love repay."'

But she was gone. He looked up at the moon, and took it into his
confidence to reproach it. "'Twas your white face beglamored me,"
he told it aloud. "See, how execrable a beginning I've made, and,
therefore, how excellent!" And he laughed, but entirely without mirth.

He remained pacing in the moonlight, very thoughtful, and, for once,
it seemed, not at all amused. His life appeared to be tangling itself
beyond un