‘Well, I have no right to make observations--your actions are not subject to my surveillance; you float above my plane,’ said the young man with some bitterness. ‘But to speak plainly, surely he--kissed you?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘He only kissed the air in front of me--ever so far off.’ ‘Was it six inches off?’ ‘No, not six inches.’ ‘Nor three.’ ‘It was quite one,’ she said with an ingenuous air. ‘I don’t call that very far.’ ‘A miss is as good as a mile, says the time-honoured proverb; and it is not for us modern mortals to question its truth.’ ‘How can you be so off-hand?’ broke out Somerset. ‘I love you wildly and desperately, Paula, and you know it well!’ ‘I have never denied knowing it,’ she said softly. ‘Then why do you, with such knowledge, adopt an air of levity at such a moment as this! You keep me at arm’s-length, and won’t say whether you care for me one bit, or no. I have owned all to you; yet never once have you owned anything to me!’ ‘I have owned much. And you do me wrong if you consider that I show levity. But even if I had not owned everything, and you all, it is not altogether such a grievous thing.’ ‘You mean to say that it is not grievous, even if a man does love a woman, and suffers all the pain of feeling he loves in vain? Well, I say it is quite the reverse, and I have grounds for knowing.’ ‘Now, don’t fume so, George Somerset, but hear me. My not owning all may not have the dreadful meaning you think, and therefore it may not be really such a grievous thing. There are genuine reasons for women’s conduct in these matters as well as for men’s, though it is sometimes supposed to be regulated entirely by caprice. And if I do not give way to every feeling--I mean demonstration--it is because I don’t want to. There now, you know what that implies; and be content.’ ‘Very well,’ said Somerset, with repressed sadness, ‘I will not expect you to say more. But you do like me a little, Paula?’ ‘Now!’ she said, shaking her head with symptoms of tenderness and looking into his eyes. ‘What have you just promised? Perhaps I like you a little more than a little, which is much too much! Yes,--Shakespeare says so, and he is always right. Do you still doubt me? Ah, I see you do!’ ‘Because somebody has stood nearer to you to-night than I.’ ‘A fogy like him!--half as old again as either of us! How can you mind him? What shall I do to show you that I do not for a moment let him come between me and you?’ ‘It is not for me to suggest what you should do. Though what you should permit ME to do is obvious enough.’ She dropped her voice: ‘You mean, permit you to do really and in earnest what he only seemed to do in the play.’ Somerset signified by a look that such had been his thought. Paula was silent. ‘No,’ she murmured at last. ‘That cannot be. He did not, nor must you.’ It was said none the less decidedly for being spoken low.