She recovered herself with a little laugh—or would have, had his hand not closed on hers. She gave it a friendly and vigorous pressure, and attempted to drop it; but he placed the other hand over it, inclosing her slender fingers, which frightened her into pretense of unconsciousness. Now she stood on the threshold. Now she was on the eve of that daybreak from which she had prayed that the shadows might flee away; and she shrank from the coming light, afraid, while dawn threatened her with what, as yet, she had left undone. And even through the confused sense of expectancy and consternation ran a fierce flame of happiness. Then, unable to endure it longer, she flung the mask from her, facing the tempest she had sown. "Let me go, Jim," she said in a colorless voice. But he held her hand closely imprisoned, and the next moment her body. The rapid racket of her heart seemed to stifle her; she tried to speak—lay inert, crushed against his shoulder, dumb, scarlet, under his kiss. "I love you," he said; "I’ve always loved you.... I’m a blackguard to say it—penniless nobody that I am—without much chance to be anything else, apparently. But I say it for better or worse.... I love you. You like me, but you think lightly of me.... With sufficient reason, God knows.... And I have no right to touch you—no right in decency or law, Diana." She forced herself away from him, but, somehow, held his hands clasped convulsively in hers. "You—shouldn’t have kissed me," she managed to say. "You mustn’t do it again—ever." He laid his face against their clasped hands; her own tightened. "Nevertheless," he said, "I love you." "You mustn’t speak that way—" She dropped her flushed face; he lifted it, and kissed her again. When he released her, she leaned back against the silver birch, head lowered, silent and did not move her hands from the moss as he bent and kissed them, too. When at last she found her voice, she spoke so low that he bent his head closer to listen. "That is the one imprudence I have never before committed—contact with any man. You must not do it to me again.... I don’t know how to take it. I _can’t_ love you. You know that." She looked up at him. "Don’t you know it?" "Yes," he said stubbornly. "You _do_ know that I can’t; don’t you? And that you cannot really love me?" "I suppose it ought to be that way; but it isn’t." And now the moment had come to make her desire a certainty—and finish what she had set herself to do—for this man’s sake. She said: "You _can’t_ care for me, Jim! What am I anyway? A shallow, pleasure-loving nobody, who sells her frivolous social gifts because it is pleasanter and easier to make a living that way than to exercise a decent profession. How can such a man as you really fall in love with such a woman?" She rose to her feet and stood leaning against the tree; and he rose, too, releasing her fingers.