y the
hunger within her into something wistful and tremulous. "Yes," said
Priscilla in that strange pathetic voice, "I--think so." And after a
brief glance at him down went her weary eyelids again.

The next thing that happened was that Robin, who was trembling,
kissed her hand. This she let him do with perfect placidity. Every
German woman is used to having her hand kissed. It is kissed on
meeting, it is kissed on parting, it is kissed at a great many odd
times in between; she holds it up mechanically when she comes
across a male acquaintance; she is never surprised at the ceremony;
the only thing that surprises her is if it is left out. Priscilla
then simply thought Robin was going. "What a mercy," she said to
herself, glancing at him a moment through her eyelashes. But Robin
was not used to hand-kissing and saw things in a very different
light. He felt she made no attempt to draw her hand away, he heard
her murmuring something inarticulate--it was merely Good-bye--he
was hurled along to his doom; and stooping over her the unfortunate
young man kissed her hair.

Priscilla opened her eyes suddenly and very wide. I don't know what
folly he would have perpetrated next, or what sillinesses were on the
tip of his tongue, or what meaning he still chose to read in her look,
but an instant afterwards he was brought down for ever from the giddy
heights of his illusions: Priscilla boxed his ears.

I am sorry to have to record it. It is always sweeter if a woman does
not box ears. The action is shrewish, benighted, mediaeval, nay,
barbarous; and this box was a very hard one indeed, extraordinarily
hard for so little a hand and so fasting a girl. But we know she had
twice already been on the verge of doing it; and the pent-up vigour of
what the policeman had not got and what the mother in the train had
not got was added I imagine to what Robin got. Anyhow it was
efficacious. There was an exclamation--I think of surprise, for surely
a young man would not have minded the pain?--and he put his hand up
quickly to his face. Priscilla got up just as quickly out of her chair
and rang the handbell furiously, her eyes on his, her face ablaze.
Annalise must have thrown herself down the ladder, for they hardly
seemed to have been standing there an instant face to face, their eyes
on a level, he scarlet, she white, both deadly silent, before the maid
was in the room.

"This person has insulted me," said Priscilla, turning to her and
po