alone with Major Harrowby.
With an attempt at her old pride she tried to draw herself away, not
looking at him, feeling abashed and humbled. "I will dance no more,"
she said faltering.

Edgar, who had her hands clasped in his, drew her gently to him again.
He held her hands up to his breast, both enclosed in one of his, his
other arm round her waist. "Will you leave me, my Leam?" he said in
his sweetest tones. "Do you not love me well enough to stay with me?"

"I must go in," said Leam faintly.

"Before you have said that you love me? Will you not say so, Leam?
I love you, my darling: no man ever loved as I love you, my sweetest
Leam, my angel, my delight! Tell me that you love me--tell me,
darling."

"Is this love?" said Leam turning away her head, her whole being
penetrated with a kind of blissful agony, where she did not know which
was strongest, the pleasure or the pain: perhaps it was the pain.

"Kiss me, and then I shall know," whispered Edgar.

"No," said Leam trembling and hiding her face, "I must not do that."

"Ah, you do not love me, and we shall never meet again," he cried in
the disappointed lover's well-feigned tone of despair, dropping her
hands and half turning away.

Leam stood for a moment as if she hesitated: then, with an
indescribable air of self-surrender, she went closer to him and laid
her hands very gently on his shoulders. "I will kiss you rather than
make you unhappy," she said in a soft voice, lifting up her face.

"My angel! now I know that you love me!" cried Edgar triumphantly,
holding her strained to his heart as he pressed her bashful, tremulous
little lips, Leam feeling that she had proved her love by the
sacrifice of all that she held most dear--by the sacrifice of herself
and modesty.

The first kiss for a girl whose love was as strong as fire and
as pure--for a girl who had not a weak or sensual fibre in her
nature--yes, it was a sacrifice the like of which men do not
understand; especially Edgar, loose-lipped, amorous Edgar, with his
easy loves, his wide experience, his consequent loss of sensitive
perception, and his holding all women as pretty much alike--creatures
rather than individuals, and created for man's pleasure: especially
he did not understand how much this little action, which was one so
entirely of course to him, cost her--how great the gift, how eloquent
of what it included. But Leam, burning with shame, thought that she
should never bear to see the sun