It takes not only a perfect man, but a strong one, to reject a pleading woman, especially if her prayer is for Love, and the lips with which she utters it are fresh and tempting; and Lord Delaval is an imperfect man, assuredly. So he stoops; and while her flushed stormy face lies against his breast, he kisses her, but only on the cheek, with the comfortable conviction that he has preserved his loyalty to Zai intact by avoiding Gabrielle’s lips. Most men now a-days are so addicted to splitting hairs! “Good-bye!” she whispers, “I cannot stay here and see you and her together!” She says it so tragically, that he half smiles. He has always thought her an excellent actress, but now she excels herself. “Nonsense, Gabrielle!” he answers carelessly. “For God’s sake don’t make a scandal whatever you do! If we _have_ made love--how many men and women do the same--without one or the other bringing the house down about their ears. You are not the only girl I have kissed and vowed all sorts of things to, but no one else has made me repent my folly as you have done. Come, kiss me--a kiss of peace--and forget that a kiss of love has ever been exchanged between us. We must all bow to the inevitable, and you cannot expect to be exempt.” “But the inevitable in this case does not come from the hand of Providence, but from the hand of the man who ought to be the last to hurt me!” she says, passionately. “I _will_ kiss you--ay, kiss you a dozen times; but, Delaval, they will be the kisses that one gives to the man one loves best, and upon whom one will never look again!” She kisses him as she speaks--kisses him on his brow, and eyes, and lips, wildly, fiercely; then she almost pushes him from her. “Good-bye!” “Good-bye!” he answers quietly, “since you will have it so; and when we meet again----” “We shall _never_ meet again!” she says, abruptly. “What folly!” he exclaims, impatiently. “I hope we never shall, until you have regained your senses, and don’t act like a mad woman.” “If I am a mad woman, you are the man who has made me so!” she retorts, impetuously. “God forgive you for it, for I cannot!” and turning on her heel, she is soon out of view. He shrugs his shoulders, and forgetting all about her, saunters back to the house whistling an opera bouffe air. But though the opera bouffe air runs in his head, in his mind there is an unpleasant conviction that Gabrielle will make a scandal of some sort. “These hot-headed, hot-hearted women are the very devil,” he mutters angrily to himself; “and I should not be surprised if she goes and peaches to old Beranger and her Ladyship--but no matter--a coronet, and a good-looking fellow like myself, to say nothing of the tin my dear miserly old dad hoarded up, are proof against any back-biters, and I’ll marry Zai yet, dear little thing. I do believe she is beginning to love me!”