ever like me better than you like Mr. Mullen?"

At this her rustic pride came suddenly between them, and withdrawing
her arm from his clasp, she stepped out of the bridle path into the wet
orchard grass that surrounded them.

"I've known him so much longer," she replied.

"And if you know me longer will you like me better, Blossom?"

Then as she still drew back, he pressed nearer, and spoke her name again
in a whisper.

"Blossom--Blossom, are you afraid of me? Do you think I would hurt you?"

The gentleness in his voice stayed her flight for an instant, and in
that instant, as she looked up at him, he stooped quickly and kissed her
mouth.

"What a damned ass I've made of myself," he thought savagely, when she
broke from him and fled over the mill brook into the Revercombs' pasture
beyond. She did not look back, but sped as straight as a frightened hare
to the covert; and by this brilliant, though unconscious coquetry, she
had wrested the victory from him at the moment when it had appeared to
fall too easily into his hands.

"Well, it's all right now. I'll take better care in the future," he
thought, his self-reproach extinguished by the assurance that, after
all, he had done nothing that justified the intrusion of his conscience.
"By Jove, she's a beauty--but she's not my kind all the same," he added
as he strolled leisurely homeward--for like many persons whose moral
standard exceeds immeasurably their ordinary rule of conduct, he
cherished somewhere in an obscure corner of his brain an image of
perfection closely related to the type which he found least alluring in
reality. Humanly tolerant of those masculine weaknesses he shared, he
had erected mentally a pinnacle of virtue upon which he exacted that
a frailer being should maintain an equilibrium. A pretty woman, it was
true, might go at a merry pace provided she was not related to him, but
he required that both his mother and his aunt should be above suspicion.
In earlier days he had had several affairs of sentiment with ladies to
whom he declined to bow if he happened to be walking with a member of
his family; and this fine discrimination was characteristic of him, for
it proved that he was capable of losing his heart in a direction where
he would refuse to lift his hat.

At the late breakfast to which he returned, he found Mr. Chamberlayne,
who had ridden over from Applegate to consult with Kesiah. In appearance
the lawyer belonged to what is called "th