"May I kiss you, dearest?" he almost pathetically asked--his voice faltered. In return she flung herself into his arms, and lifted her lips to his. It was a great moment to him, that abandonment of passion in his beloved--but even as their lips met, and he felt her heart beat against his own, a horrible sensation of despair mingled with the relief her spontaneous outburst had been to him. She still clung to him after the embrace--her cheek against his shoulder--and he heard her groan. "My love, this won’t do!" he cheerily exclaimed. "You make me feel as if I had injured you somehow--that I must be a tyrant--a monster--if you repent of your bargain there is time yet, you know! Although I have the licence, and we could be married to-morrow if you chose, you can draw back. If you repent of your promise to marry me--I do not hold you to it! And remember, no one knows----" She stirred--and rose. "No one knows?" she feverishly asked. "You managed it all--without--telling _anybody_?" "Except the people I was obliged to tell to procure the special licence," he answered lightly, as he walked along at her side. "And they--well, one would as soon suspect one’s lawyer, or doctor, or banker, of betraying one’s confidence as the Doctor’s Commons fellows! It would be absurd." The bench he remembered was there, under the hawthorn, which was still a mass of bloom. Below a stone balustrade the river ran, wide, flowing, hastening seaward. They seated themselves. He took her hand, drew off her glove, and kissed the pink, soft palm of her delightful, delicately slender hand. "How soft it is, dear little hand!" he said tenderly. "Do you know what the supposed experts say of a soft palm, or skin? That the possessor is morbidly sensitive and sympathetic! I have thought that of you, darling! I have wondered, sometimes, whether you are not indulging in melancholy retrospect--thoughts of your dead parents’ troubles, or something! If so, nothing could be more foolish and useless! Can we recall the past? No! it is dead--there is nothing in this world so dead! Are we not taught that our great Creator Himself will not meddle with it? Darling, you make me cruelly anxious, and that is a fact, by your gloom! Do you think I do not know--feel--share your secret suffering? While I cannot guess what it is, I can hardly endure your evident unhappiness--I could bear it, if I only knew! Joan, Joan--I am almost your husband; as we are to be married so soon, you might confide in me! Child! My dearest--my almost wife--tell me! I can help you, I must be able to help you, and I will! Don’t you, won’t you, believe me?" His words--his passion--pattered harmlessly upon her preoccupied being. She had an idea--by a subterfuge to place her awful position before him, and hear what he would say to it.