if you left me I should
break my heart.'

'No, no,' she answered, drawing him a little nearer. 'Hearts are not so
easily broken.'

'Easily!' he said. 'Do you think it's easy, Claudia, to live as I do?
I'm in heaven now, and I'd give my life to be with you for an hour
like this. But when I'm away from you, when I see you in that beast
Bannister's arms, and remember the only time I ever kissed you--oh, why
were you so kind then, and why are you so cold and cruel now?'

'Cold? Cruel?' She stroked his flushed cheek with her soft fingers. 'I
let you kiss me because I thought what a dear, nice handsome boy you
were; but I should never have done it if I had thought that you would be
so silly after it. If you were not so very silly I should like to kiss
you, because it's a woman's way to kiss the people that she's really
fond of. But you _are_ so foolish, Paul dear, that I dare not.'

'I won't be foolish,' said Paul, lifting his head, and looking at her.

'Well,' she said, 'will you give me your word of honour to stay here for
five minutes after I am gone if I give you just one kiss, and not to
beg me for another, and not to try to get into the same carriage with me
going home?'

'Don't ask me that,' he besought her.

'Ah, Paul,' she said tenderly, 'don't you think for a moment that I am
a woman, and that this foolish world would talk about me, even with you,
if I gave it only the shadow of a chance? Come; I must go now. Promise.'

'The kiss,' said Paul.

'The promise,' said Miss Belmont.

'Yes, I promise. If you asked me to leap over the rocks in front of us
I'd do it.'

'Give me your hands, then. You won't try to keep me?'

'No, no, no.'

She kissed him warmly and lingeringly on the lips, and darted suddenly
away. Paul rose to his feet and held out his arms towards her.

'Your promise,' she said. 'Your word of honour as a gentleman.' He
dropped his hands. 'You shall be paid for that,' she whispered, with a
face glowing like his own, and she returned to him and kissed him once
more, holding his hands in hers. Then she left him swiftly and ran down
the pathway, turning at the bend to waft a last kiss to him, and so was
gone.

Paul mooned about in a miserable, aching ecstasy for a quarter of
an hour or so, and then, finding by his watch that the supper-hour
appointed by Darco was near at hand, he sauntered to the hotel. Miss
Belmont was there before him, radiant and serene, and looking as
unkissable as Diana.