Then all at
once, before she had time to so much as think of resistance, he had put
both arms about her and kissed her squarely on her cheek.

Then the front door closed, and she was left abruptly alone,
breathless, stunned, staring wide-eyed into the darkness.

Her first sensation was one merely of amazement. She put her hand
quickly to her cheek, first the palm and then the back, murmuring
confusedly:

"What? Why?--why?"

Then she whirled about and ran up the stairs, her silks clashing and
fluttering about her as she fled, gained her own room, and swung the
door violently shut behind her. She turned up the lowered gas and,
without knowing why, faced her mirror at once, studying her reflection
and watching her hand as it all but scoured the offended cheek.

Then, suddenly, with an upward, uplifting rush, her anger surged within
her. She, Laura, Miss Dearborn, who loved no man, who never conceded,
never capitulated, whose "grand manner" was a thing proverbial, in all
her pitch of pride, in her own home, her own fortress, had been kissed,
like a school-girl, like a chambermaid, in the dark, in a corner.

And by--great heavens!--_Landry Court._ The boy whom she fancied she
held in such subjection, such profound respect. Landry Court had dared,
had dared to kiss her, to offer her this wretchedly commonplace and
petty affront, degrading her to the level of a pretty waitress, making
her ridiculous.

She stood rigid, drawn to her full height, in the centre of her
bedroom, her fists tense at her sides, her breath short, her eyes
flashing, her face aflame. From time to time her words, half smothered,
burst from her.

"What does he think I am? How dared he? How dared he?"

All that she could say, any condemnation she could formulate only made
her position the more absurd, the more humiliating. It had all been
said before by generations of shop-girls, school-girls, and servants,
in whose company the affront had ranged her. Landry was to be told in
effect that he was never to presume to seek her acquaintance again.
Just as the enraged hussy of the street corners and Sunday picnics
shouted that the offender should "never dare speak to her again as long
as he lived." Never before had she been subjected to this kind of
indignity. And simultaneously with the assurance she could hear the
shrill voice of the drab of the public balls proclaiming that she had
"never been kissed in all her life before."

Of all slights, of all