ght and I should have
listened to her warning; now I shall never, never respect myself again."

"I see no reason why you shouldn't," said Dalton, a sense of humour
overcoming his wrath. "You've done nothing but tell me in polite
language to go to the devil."

"You kissed me!"

"What of it? Many women in your position are kissed, and they are in no
wise cast down," he laughed sardonically.

"I feel degraded--I feel unfit to kiss my own, dear little baby again!"

"You should have thought of all that when you were so anxious to charm
me," he returned cruelly.

"You are a beast, and the most hateful man I know!" She made an attempt
in the gloom to crawl away to some distance from him and his rug, but he
ordered her to stay where she was, adding,

"I shan't trouble you again. You have nothing to fear from me."

"I don't want to share the same rug!--I wish I was a mile away!"

"The rug has done you no harm. If you prefer it, I'll shift off it. The
best thing you can do is to go to sleep."

"I couldn't with this sin on my conscience."

"What sin?" he asked repressing his impatience with difficulty.

"This sin against my husband."

"You have committed none. If my kissing you was a sin, mine is the
conscience to be troubled; but it was slain quite a long time ago," he
added with a short laugh.

"I am not joking," she said angrily. "How do you suppose I can face my
husband knowing that I have behaved so as to make another man kiss me?"
What a child she seemed!

There was no doubting her distress, and Dalton exhausted every argument
in his attempt to understand her attitude of mind. "What do you want me
to do?" he asked finally. "If an apology is of any use, I apologise
humbly for behaving as I did. I grant you, I am a perfect specimen of a
cad. If it will do you any good, tell your husband all about it when you
get back, and send him round to give me a horse-whipping. I promise I
shall not injure a hair of his head."

"He is much more likely to shoot you."

"Even so. He is perfectly welcome to. I am not in love with my life.
Only let him do it by stealth so that they don't hang him afterwards."

Joyce cried again hopelessly, till Dalton felt himself a sort of
criminal.

"Please don't! I cannot tell you how sorry I am to have upset you so. I
had no idea you would take it like this. There are so many women
who----"

"Like Mrs. Fox?" she interrupted scornfully.

"Perhaps. I don't know much of Mrs. Fox. She