ie," Theodore murmured entreatingly.

She buried her head closer against him.

"Kiss me," he insisted, drawing her face upward. His lips fell upon
hers, and Jinnie's eyes closed under the magic of her first kiss.

The master-passion of the man brought to sudden life corresponding
emotions in the girl--emotions that hurt and frightened her. She put
her hand to his face, and touched it. He drew back, looking into her
eyes.

"Don't," she breathed. "Don't kiss me any more like--like that."

"But you love me, my girlie, sweet?" he murmured, his lips roving over
her face in dear freedom. "You do!... You do!"

Jinnie's arms went about him, but her tongue refused to speak.

"Kiss me again!" Theodore insisted.

Oh, how she wanted to kiss him once more! How she gloried in the
strong arms, and the handsome face strung tense with his love for her!
Then their lips met in the wonders of a second kiss. Jinnie had
thought the first one could never be equaled, but as she lay limply in
his arms, his lips upon hers, she lost count of everything.

It might have been the weird effect of the shadows, or the deep,
sudden silence about them that drew the girl slowly from his arms.

"I want my fiddle," she whispered. "Let me go!"

Faint were the inflections of the words; insistent the drawing back of
the dear warm body.

Theodore permitted her to get up, and with staggering step she took
her position at the tree trunk.

Then he sank down, hot blood coursing through his veins. Long ago he
had realized in Jinnie and the fiddle essentials--essentials to his
future and his happiness, and to-day her kisses and divine, womanly
yielding had only strengthened that realization. Nothing now was of
any importance to him save this vibrant, temperamental girl. There was
something so delightfully young--so pricelessly dear in the way she
had surrendered herself to him. The outside world faded from his
memory as Jinnie closed her eyes, and with a very white face began to
play. For that day she had finished with the song of the fairies, the
babbling of the brook, and the nodding rhythm of the flowers in the
summer's breeze. All that she considered now was Theodore and his
kisses. The bow came down over a string with one long, vibrating,
passionate call. It expressed the awakening of the girl's
soul--awakened by the touch of a man's turbulent lips--Jinnie's
God-given man. Her fiddle knew it--felt it--expressed it!

With that first seductive kis