upon life."

"Pooh!" she scoffed. "You talk like a stiffened sheet of foolscap! I am
to leave here to-morrow, then, without my packet?"

"You must certainly leave--when you do leave--without that," he
assented. "There is one thing, however, which I very sincerely hope that
you will leave behind you."

"And that?"

"Your forgiveness."

"My forgiveness for what?" she asked, after a moment's pause.

"For my rashness this morning."

Her eyes grew a little larger.

"Because you kissed me?" she observed, without flinching. "I have
nothing to forgive. In fact," she went on, "I think that I should have
had more to forgive if you had not."

He was puzzled and yet encouraged. She was always bewildering him by her
sudden changes from the woman of sober thoughtfulness to the woman of
feeling, the woman eager to give, eager to receive. At that moment it
seemed as though her sex possessed her to the exclusion of everything
outside. Her eyes were soft and filled with the desire of love, her lips
sweet and tremulous. She had suddenly created a new atmosphere around
her, an atmosphere of bewildering and passionate femininity.

"Wont you tell me, please, what you mean?" he begged.

"Isn't it clear?" she answered, very softly but with a suspicion of
scorn in her low tones. "You kissed me because I deliberately invited
it. I know that quite well. My anger--and I have been angry about it--is
with myself."

He was a little taken aback. Her perfect naturalness was disarming, a
little confusing.

"You certainly did seem provocative," he confessed, "but I ought to have
remembered."

"You are very stupid," she sighed. "I deliberately invited your embrace.
Your withholding it would simply have added to my humiliation. I am
furious with myself, simply because, although I have lived a great
part of my life with men, on equal terms with them, working with them,
playing with them, seeing more of them at all times than of my own sex,
such a thing has never happened to me before."

"I felt that," he said simply.

For a moment her face shone. There was a look of gratitude in her eyes.
Her impulsive grasp of his hand left his fingers tingling.

"I am glad that you understood," she murmured. "Perhaps that will help
me just a little. For the rest, if you wish to be very kind, you will
forget."

"If I cannot do that," he promised, "I will at least turn the key upon
my memories."

"Do more than that," she begged. "Throw the key int