ly, if it is silly to be
madly, wildly happy, and oblivious of everything else.

"I will go straight to Aunt Sophia now, when I take you back to
Claridge's," he said, presently, when we had got a little calmer.

I wonder what kisses do that it makes one have that perfectly lovely
sensation down the back, just like certain music does, only much, much
more so. I thought they would be dreadful things when it was a question of
Christopher, but Robert! Oh, well, as I said before, I can't think of any
other heaven.

"What time is it?" I had sense enough to ask presently.

He lit a match and looked at his watch.

"Ten minutes past five," he exclaimed.

"And Christopher was coming about four," I said; "and if you had not
chanced to meet me in the park by now I should have been engaged to him,
and probably trying to bear his kissing me."

"My God!" said Robert, fiercely; "it makes me rave to think of it," and he
held me so tight for a moment I could hardly breathe.

"You won't have any one else's kisses ever again in this world, and that I
tell you," he said, through his teeth.

"I--I don't want them," I whispered creeping closer to him. "And I never
have had any, never any one but you, Robert."

"Darling," he said, "how that pleases me!"

Of course, if I wanted to I could go on writing pages and pages of all the
lovely things we said to each other, but it would sound, even to read to
myself, such nonsense that I can't, and I couldn't make the tone of
Robert's voice, or the exquisite fascination of his ways--tender, and
adoring, and masterful. It must all stay in my heart, but oh! it is as if
a fairy with a wand had passed and said "bloom" to a winter tree. Numbers
of emotions that I had never dreamed about were surging through me--the
floodgates of everything in my soul seemed opening in one rush of love and
joy. While we were together nothing appeared to matter, all barriers
melted away.

Fate would be sure to be kind to lovers like us.

We got back to Claridge's about six, and Robert would not let me go up to
my sitting-room until he had found out if Christopher had gone.

Yes, he had come at four, we discovered, and had waited twenty minutes,
and then left, saying he would come again at half-past six.

"Then you will write him a note, and give it to the porter for him, saying
you are engaged to me and can't see him," Robert said.

"No, I won't do that. I am not engaged to you, and cannot be until your
fami