Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/350

342 (So it was my face that I left Paul to muse over that day on the terrace.)

"I have kissed this painted thing very often," he says, drawing me gently to his breast; "now the real lips are my own, do you deny them to me, Nell? I could take a hundred if I would, but I am too proud to do that; have you not one to give me, love?"

For a moment I tremble and hesitate; it is so soon, so terribly soon; if that other only knew! then, for my duty is to this my lord, I lift my lips to his, and as he folds me in his arms, he kisses me as I kiss him for the first time. Across that perfect kiss, than which the earth can give me no such other, why does a picture rise up before me, of a man and woman standing in the moonlight, wishing each other a passionate, last good-bye?

"If you were not so strong," I say, stroking his hand with my slim fingers, "I would keep you in such order, banish you to such a distance; you should sue so meekly for ever such a little favour!"

"If you were like that," he says, kissing me passionately on cheek and brow, and eyes and lips, (verily, one salute leads to a great many more!) "you would never have me at your feet. It is the soft, adorable, bewitching little creatures like you who get into a man's heart and stop there, though, Heaven knows! you kept me at a distance long enough."

"I suffered for it enough!" I say, sighing. "Oh! I shall always consider you treated me very badly! It is a wonder my hair is not grey with all the misery I have had."

"My sweetheart!" he says.

Here there is a long and ridiculous pause, that people may fill up as they please.

"Do you know that I felt glad sometimes to see you looking sad? I thought you were fretting after Lubin; and I said to myself, 'Now she will know a little of what I am enduring.

Yes, he loves differently to George, not half as well; and I