Page:Outlawandlawmak00praegoog.djvu/193

Rh He lifted his arm and showed her a white wrap which he had been carrying half concealed by her bouquet. He had asked permission to hold that for her while she had finished her dance with Mr. Anderson.

"It is Ina's," said Elsie. "Thank you."

He put it on her shoulders. She took her bouquet from him. "Thank you," she said again. "I don't think there's anything you can do for me except amuse me."

"I shall not amuse you," he answered, "I am too deadly serious for that."

"Deadly seriousness may be amusing sometimes. Go on, Mr. Trant. Talk—talk"

"What shall I talk about—you or myself?"

"Or both. Do you like my dress? Do you think I look nice?"

"You look beautiful," he said deliberately. "Every time I look at you I—I want to kiss you."

She shrank—"Don't please talk like that."

"I said I should jar upon you if I allowed myself to be real, didn't I? That's what I really feel though. I want all the time to take you in my arms, and cover you with kisses. I would do it too—if"

She got up. "Please take me in. I don't like you when you say wild things."

"Don't be afraid. I have too much respect for you to offend. Besides my time isn't yet. When I kiss you it shall be with your permission—unless"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I see that you will never freely give me permission. Then I shall take it. But I do things in a big way, Miss Valliant—not in a hole-and-corner fashion. It wouldn't suit me to snatch a kiss in a garden, and see you go off in a fit of indignation, thinking me an odious cad. You wouldn't think me a cad if I seized a kiss in some wild lonely place, with not a soul in earshot; a place like Baròlin Waterfall, let us say, where you would be utterly helpless, and at my mercy. There'd be something big about that. You'd be too frightened to tell yourself I was a cad. You'd be frightened