I walked towards her, wondering at the sudden change in her voice. As I approached she straightened her arms out each side of her, and half-closing her eyes, raised her face to mine. "Kiss me," she said, almost in a whisper; "kiss my lips." I could hardly have declined such an invitation even if I had wished to, but as a matter of fact I felt no such prompting. It was over three years since I had kissed anybody, and with her eyes half-closed and her breast softly rising and falling, Sonia looked decidedly attractive. I bent down till my mouth was almost touching hers. Then with a little sigh she put her arms round my neck, and slowly and deliberately our lips met. It was at this exceedingly inopportune moment that Savaroff's guttural voice came grating up the stairs from the hall below. "Sonia!" he shouted--"Sonia! Where are you? I want you." She quietly disengaged her arms, and drawing back, paused for a moment with her hands on my shoulders. "Now you understand," she said, looking straight into my eyes. "They are nothing to me, my father and the doctor--I hate them both. It is you I am thinking of--you only." She leaned forward and swiftly, almost fiercely again kissed my mouth. "When the time comes," she whispered-- "Sonia! Sonia!" Once more Savaroff's voice rose impatiently from the hall. In a moment Sonia had crossed the room. I had one rapid vision of her looking back at me--her lips parted her dark eyes shining passionately, and then the door closed and I was alone. I sat down on the bed and took a long breath. There was a time when an unexpected incident of this sort would merely have left me in a state of comfortable optimism, but a prolonged residence in Dartmoor had evidently shaken my nerve.