Page:Herbert Jenkins - Patricia Brent Spinster.djvu/315

 heard you were going away. Oh, my dear!" she cried in a low voice, "be gentle with me. I'm all bruises."

Bowen bent across to her. "I'm a brute," he said, "but"

She shook her head. "Not that sort," she said. "It's my pride I've bruised. I seem to have turned everything upside down. You'll have to be very gentle with me at first, please." She looked up at him with a flicker of a smile.

"Not only at first, dear, but always," said Bowen gently as he rose and seated himself beside her. "Patricia, when did you—care?" he blurted out the last word hurriedly.

"I don't know," she replied dreamily. "You see," she continued after a pause, "I've not been like other girls. Do you know, Peter," she looked up at him shyly, "you're the first man who has ever kissed me, except my father. Isn't it absurd?"

"It's nothing of the sort," Bowen declared, tilting up her chin and gazing down into her eyes. "But you haven't answered my question."

"Well!" continued Patricia, speaking slowly, "when you sent me flowers and messengers and telegraph-boys and things I was angry, and then when you didn't I" she paused.

"Wanted them," he suggested.

"U-m-m-m!" she nodded her head. "I suppose so," she conceded. "But," she added with a sudden change of mood, "I shall always