“Well, perfectly _tractable_!” He broke off to laugh again, and moved nearer to me. “A fortnight after that, Nancy, you were defying me in my own den! That frock, and—_chucking_ my ring about the piano! And now ...” he said, with a hand in his jacket-pocket, “now, Miss Trant, I’m going to put that ring back, if I may, in its proper place.” He would have taken my hand, but all in my flurry of delight I put them both behind me. “No! Wait! Your people—what will they say to—all this?” “But ... bless me! they know we’re engaged!” “Yes, _that_ way,” I said shakily. “But _this_?” “D’you suppose, Nancy-Monica Trant, that they’re ever going to know that there’s any difference? D’you think ‘Theo will notice’ any? I doubt if they’d believe that yarn if we told them! Very soon we shan’t believe it ourselves! So——Wait? I’ve waited too long!” But I was, all of a sudden, shy of him as I’d never been in my trembling typist days. I put him back with a look. “_How_ long?” I asked falteringly. “Can’t you tell me when?” His face was full of protest, but he leaned, half-sitting, against the edge of his desk. “What can I tell you?” he said. “That it was just now in Battersea Park, seeing that the girl one can’t stop squabbling with is the girl one _has_ to make love to——” “Yes, but really——” “Or that it was mere gratitude to you for dragging me out of the water? Or—as soon as I saw how disappointed my people would be if I ever let you go. (My mother, last night! In tears—declaring it must be all _my_ temper!) Or that—well, that as soon as I got you down to my home I began to wonder what on earth I was thinking of, not to see that I kept you there.” “No, but really——” “Hang it all, Nancy, after all these weeks and months!” he cried, gaily impatient, throwing back his handsome fair head. Could I ever have thought he wasn’t handsome? He strode up to me, sat sideways on the green-leather arm of my chair, put his hand in front of me on the other arm, and so faced me. It brought his eyes, gay with laughter and delight, nearer than they had ever been, except once, to my face. And I felt those eyes of his flash swiftly, from the ripple of hair over my ear to the hot scarlet wave that I knew was dyeing my cheek, then to my mouth. And it was as though I had felt his lips first here, then there, and then there again, even before he drew closer yet and kissed me as though he could not stop. But I pulled away. “Oh, Billy! No! _Please!_” I heard myself sob. “I can’t bear it. Not—not all at once. Not so _much_——” “Little _miser_!” he muttered, and took my hands down to clasp behind his neck. “Am I _never_ to be allowed anything——” “But I thought——” “How _could_ you?” he whispered. “Haven’t you _eyes_?... Dashing away from me like that, before I could get in a word! You spitfire! ‘Don’t speak to me,’ at every turn! And that first time, I was only given a scrap of your hair to kiss!” “S-sorry you don’t like my hair——”