ing a polo-ball
about and shouting stridently. "A sound mind in a sound body!"... He
was rather vain of his neat shoes, too, and doubtless stunted his
feet; and she had seen the little spot on his neck caused by the
chafing of his collar-stud.... No, she did not want him to touch her,
just now at any rate. His touch would be too like a betrayal of another
touch ... somewhere, sometime, somehow ... in that tantalising dream
that refused to allow itself either to be fully remembered or quite
forgotten. What was that dream? What was it?...

She continued to gaze into the fire.

Of a sudden she sprang to her feet with a choked cry of almost animal
fury. The fool had touched her. Carried away doubtless by the memory of
that afternoon by the windmill, he had, in passing once more to the
kettle, crept softly behind her and put a swift burning kiss on the side
of her neck.

Then he had retreated before her, stumbling against the table and causing
the cups and saucers to jingle.

The basket-chair tilted up, but righted itself again.

"I told you--I told you--" she choked, her stockish figure shaking with
rage, "I told you--you--"

He put up his elbow as if to ward off a blow.

"_You_ touch me--_you!--you!_" the words broke from her.

He had put himself farther round the table. He stammered.

"Here--dash it all, Bessie--what is the matter?"

"_You_ touch me!"

"All right," he said sullenly. "I won't touch you again--no fear. I
didn't know you were such a firebrand. All right, drop it now. I won't
again. Good Lord!"

Slowly the white fist she had drawn back sank to her side again.

"All right now," he continued to grumble resentfully. "You needn't take
on so. It's said--I won't touch you again." Then, as if he remembered
that after all she was ill and must be humoured, he began, while her
bosom still rose and fell rapidly, to talk with an assumption that
nothing much had happened. "Come, sit down again, Bessie. The tea's in
the pot and I'll have it ready in a couple of jiffs. What a ridiculous
little girl you are, to take on like that!... And I say, listen! That's a
muffin-bell, and there's a grand fire for toast! You sit down while I run
out and get 'em. Give me your key, so I can let myself in again--"

He took her key from her bag, caught up his hat, and hastened out.

But she did not sit down again. She was no calmer for his quick
disappearance. In that moment when he had recoiled from her she had had
the ex