!" she sobbed miserably; "You don't love me. Don't lie to
me! Let me go!"

"Why do you say that? You love me, and I--"

"Don't say it! It isn't true! I know. I threw myself at your head.
What else could you do? You care nothing about me; to you I'm just one
more silly woman. No; let me be, please! You do not love me--you
don't, you don't, you don't!"

He shrugged, relinquished his effort to recapture her, muttered
uncertainly: "Blessed if I know!"

Recovering a little, she drew her hands swiftly across face and eyes
that still burned with his kisses.

"Oh!" she cried brokenly, "why did you--why did I--?"

"What's the good of asking that? It's done now," he argued with a
touch of aggrieved resentment. "I didn't mean--I meant to--I don't
know what I meant. Only--never this."

He took an impatient stride or two in the shelter of the shadow,
turned back to her, expostulant: "It's too bad! I'd have given
worlds--"

"But now I've gone and done it!" she retorted bitterly. In chagrin,
her own indignation mounted. "It is too bad, poor Mr. Lyttleton!"

That was too much; he came closer and grasped her wrist. "Why do you
talk that way to me?" he demanded wrathfully. "What have I done--?"

"You? Nothing!" she broke in, roughly wrenching her hand free in a
fury of humiliation. "Do you ever do anything? Isn't the woman always
the aggressor? Never your fault--of course not! But don't,
please, worry; I shan't ever remind you. You're quite free to go and
forget what's happened as quickly as you like!"

She scrubbed the knuckles of one hand roughly across her quivering
lips. "Forget!" she cried. "Oh, if only I might ever . . . But that's
my penance, the mortification of remembering how I took advantage of
the chivalry of a man who didn't care for me--and couldn't!"

"You don't know that," Lyttleton retorted.

Provoked to imprudence by this sudden contrariety, this strange
inconsistence, he made a futile attempt to regain her hand. "Don't be
foolish. Can't you see I'm crazy about you?"

"Oh, yes!" she laughed, contemptuous.

"You're no fool," he declared hotly. "You know well you can't--a woman
like you--play with a man like me as if he were a child. I tell you
I--"

He checked himself with a firm hand; since, it seemed, she was one who
took such matters seriously. "I'm mad about you," he repeated in a
more subdued tone, "and I'd give anything if . . . Only . . . the
deuce of it is, I can't . . ."

"You can't afford