uy retorted, biting his lip hard. "As if that individual
would have any will of his own. You want to provoke me, I see."

The answer came in so low a whisper that, though he bent his ear down,
he had almost to guess at the words.

"No, I have never tried to do that, even during the last three months. I
am not brave enough. Perhaps I should not come, because--I could not
bear it."

They were silent. She was so near him now that her quick breath stirred
his hair, and he could feel the pulse of her heart beating against his
own side. The fiery Livingstone blood, heated seven-fold by wine and
passion, was surging through his veins like molten iron. Memory and
foresight were both swept away like withered leaves by the strength of
the terrible temptation.

His arm stole round her waist, and he drew her toward him--close--closer
yet; then she looked up in his face. The cloud of thoughtful gravity has
passed away from hers, and the provocations of a myriad of coquettes and
courtesans concentrated in her marvelous eyes.

He bent down his lofty head, and instantly their lips met, and were set
together fast.

A kiss! Tibullus, Secundus, Moore, and a thousand other poets and
poetasters, have rhymed on the word for centuries, decking it with the
choicest and quaintest conceits. But, remember, it was with a kiss that
the greatest of all criminals sealed the unpardonable sin--it was a kiss
which brought on Francesca punishment so unutterably piteous that he
swooned at the sight who endured to look on all other terrors of
nine-circled hell.

CHAPTER XXI.

"God help thee, then!
I'll see thy face no more.
Like water spilled upon the plain,
Not to be gathered up again,
Is the old love I bore."

Before that long caress was ended, close behind them there broke forth a
low, plaintive cry, such as might be wrung from the bravest of delicate
women, in her extremity of pain, when stricken by a heavy brutal hand.

The hot blood ebbed back in Guy Livingstone's veins, and froze at its
fountain-head. His punishment had begun already. Before her face, white
as the dress she wore, was revealed through a break in the dark green
foliage of the camellias, he knew that he had trifled away his life's
happiness, and lost Constance Brandon.

She came forward slowly. With a valiant effort she had shaken off the
first feeling of faintness that had crept over her, and there was
scarcely a trace of emotio