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206 "What a shy little thing we are! Not one kiss?"

"Not—not yet," she said, still shrinking.

He bent down and kissed her neck, and then her arms, and then her gloved hands, and back again to her dimpled shoulder. She put up her bouquet to shield herself from the rain of kisses. She had kept her lips—but these scorched and hurt her.

"No, let us talk."

"Kissing is better than talking, when one has such a delicious soft thing as you to kiss. Haven't plenty of other men found that out, and told you so?"

"I don't know whether they have found it out. They have not told me so."

"Not, really? Am I the first?" he asked jestingly, incredulously.

"Almost the first. Yes, the first." She made a mental reservation—the first man whom she had freely allowed to kiss her, and whom she intended to marry. Blake had kissed her, but that had been a theft, an outrage.

"You all say that," he said laughing. "But the ladies of Leichardt's Town tell a different tale."

"Ah!" she gave a little wounded exclamation. "Please don't tell me what they said. I know it was something cruel. Tell me"

"Tell you what?"

"Anything that is not too hard for me. Tell me what made you first think of this?"

"If I had a looking glass I'd put it in front of you and ask you to read the answer to that question in your own face. I love my love with an E, because she is—hang it, there's not an adjective for Elsie, except elegant, and that does not express you. I love my love because she is the loveliest woman I've ever seen. Will that do?"

"And you will give up everything for me—only because I am pretty?"

"Give up everything!" he repeated. "Gain everything, you mean."

"It is giving up—when you don't know a girl, and