t isn't necessary I
should; and I'm quite willing to say good-bye, if you prefer. You haven't
been so frank with me as I have with you; but that doesn't make any
difference; perhaps you never meant to be, or couldn't be, if you meant.
Good-bye." He bowed and turned toward the door.

She fluttered between him and it. "I wish to know what you accuse me of!"

"I? Nothing."

"You imply that I have been unjust toward you."

"Oh no!"

"And I can't let you go till you prove it."

"Prove to a woman that--Will you let me pass?"

"No!" She spread her slender arms across the doorway.

"Oh, very well!" Jeff took her hands and put them both in the hold of one
of his large, strong bands. Then, with the contact, it came to him, from
a varied experience of girls in his rustic past, that this young lady,
who was nothing but a girl after all, was playing her comedy with a
certain purpose, however little she might know it or own it. He put his
other large, strong hand upon her waist, and pulled her to him and kissed
her. Another sort of man, no matter what he had believed of her, would
have felt his act a sacrilege then and there. Jeff only knew that she had
not made the faintest straggle against him; she had even trembled toward
him, and he brutally exulted in the belief that he had done what she
wished, whether it was what she meant or not.

She, for her part, realized that she had been kissed as once she had
happened to see one of the maids kissed by the grocer's boy at the
basement door. In an instant this man had abolished all her defences of
family, of society, of personality, and put himself on a level with her
in the most sacred things of life. Her mind grasped the fact and she
realized it intellectually, while as yet all her emotions seemed
paralyzed. She did not know whether she resented it as an abominable
outrage or not; whether she hated the man for it or not. But perhaps he
was in love with her, and his love overpowered him; in that case she
could forgive him, if she were in love with him. She asked herself
whether she was, and whether she had betrayed herself to him so that he
was somehow warranted in what he did. She wondered if another sort of man
would have done it, a gentleman, who believed she was in love with him.
She wondered if she were as much shocked as she was astonished. She knew
that there was everything in the situation to make the fact shocking, but
she got no distinct reply from her jarred consciou