“Presently.—Oh, yes, about that gorse. He said the first blooming was more showy—more fuss made over it—first love, you know, and all that; but that it was nothing like as sweet as the later time. Should you agree with him, d’you think?” “How _should_ I know?” I retorted rather flippantly, to hide my intense surprise that Billy should possess—let alone quote!—a friend who sounded so utterly unlike himself. “You might know me well enough by this time to see I’m not that sort of girl!” “Which sort of girl? The kind who doesn’t fall in love a second time?” “The kind who doesn’t fall in love at all,” I said decidedly. “Anyhow, I find the second blooming of the gorse, without any metaphors, quite beautiful enough against that dragonfly-blue bit of Bay!” “Ah, yes! You’re fond of the effect of flowering plants against the blue sea, as I think you mentioned, the evening my uncle dined at The Lawn,” said Billy, teasingly and unexpectedly. “Only, didn’t you specify oleanders and myrtles and the Riviera——” “Oh, Billy! I never thought you’d do that,” I interrupted him with real reproach. “No; I _never_ thought you’d be so mean as to remind me, ever again, of that ghastly evening! I didn’t!” There was silence for a moment. He stared down at me. I wouldn’t look at him. I turned to look at a brown velvet bee that was buzzing some flattery or other into the golden ear of a gorse-blossom near by. Then I heard him say slowly: “‘Ghastly,’ you call it?” “Well—! Of _course_!” “I see,” he said, still more slowly. “You mean that it still rankles. You haven’t forgotten.... You resent that still, in spite of agreeing to be friends ... in spite of letting one suppose that—well! that it _wasn’t_ so sickeningly hard for you now, after all. You _do_ bear a grudge then, still. You mean—” It came out, the last thing I ever expected to hear him mention!—“that about that kiss!” “That?” I retorted quickly, and with my airiest laugh, for this seemed the only way in which to face the paralysingly embarrassing point he’d seen fit to raise again. “Oh, that! I never gave it a thought, Billy! I quite understood! Besides, you couldn’t possibly call that private-theatricals sort of peck a _kiss_, exactly!” “No,” he returned, as quickly. “You couldn’t, could you?” He took a step towards me, then caught me to him by the shoulders, and for a second I thought he was going to gratify the longing which I’d seen in his eyes any time during that first week of my stay at The Lawn. I thought he was going to shake me. But no. In quicker time than it can be told, his hands had flown from my shoulders to the pink strings of my sun-bonnet; he’d untied them and tossed the bonnet on to the nearest hassock of a gorse-bush. He put both brown hands under my chin and turned my face up to his. Before I could so much as gasp, he swooped down and kissed me, muttering, “But what could you call this—and this—and this?” Three times—greedily—on the mouth.