Without a moment's delay Jaffrey Bretton sprung the question that was already on his lips. "Daphne--have you ever been kissed very much?" Above the cruel shadows that underlined the lovely young eyes, the eyes themselves widened still with blank astonishment of a little girl. But the white teeth that gleamed so brightly in the half-light were caught for the first time in their lives across the crimson line of an over-conscious under lip. "I said,'Were you ever kissed very much?'" repeated her father a bit tersely. It was the big, blue, bewildered child's eyes that proved the truth of the red lips answer. "Why--why once," stammered Daphne perplexedly. "Why once on a boat--when I was a little girl--and--and lost my doll [80] overboard--an--an old lady jumped up and kissed me. Oughtn't she to have?" Heavy with bewilderment only the blue eyes lifted to the stranger's face, winced darkly away again behind their shadowy lashes, and opened wide once more to her father's strangely inscrutable smile. "Yes--but man-kisses?" probed her father quite mercilessly. "You--you are engaged to be married?" "I--I _was_ engaged to be married," corrected Daphne. It was the red lips that did all the answering now. "If you mean----" curled the red lips, "if you mean----" Startlingly just above her delicate cheek-bones two spots of red flared suddenly. "It--it just never happened--somehow," she whispered. "Maybe--people don't kiss much before they're married." Into the blue eyes suddenly welled a great blur of tears. "It just--never happened--that's all," quivered the red lips. Quick as a bolt the white teeth shot across the quiver. "Thank God it never happened!" cried the red lips. "I loathe men! I despise them! I----" "This--this gentleman," said Jaffrey Bretton, [81] quite abruptly, "has come to kiss you 'Good-night!'----" "_What_?" screamed Daphne. Reeling back against the dark wainscoting she stood there before them with a single slender hand creeping out of its white sleeve towards her throat. "Oh, I admit," said her father, "that it will not be just the kiss that the old lady gave you when your doll was drowned. Nor yet the kiss that your English Professor was doubtless planning to give you some time. But as kisses go--you will find no fault with it--I am quite sure." "Why--why, Old-Dad!" gasped Daphne. Flaming with protest, paling with revulsion, she lifted her stricken eyes to the stranger only to find that his own face was quite as stricken as hers. Ashy-gray where his flush had been, faintly green around his insolent young nostrils, his eyes seemed fairly begging for mercy. Then quite suddenly he gave a queer, strained little smile, sank down on one knee like a hero in a Play, and picking up the hem of her gown pressed his lips solemnly to it. [82] "You little--funny--furious--Baby," he began, twitched his queer smile again, and crumpled up at her feet! "Call my man--quick!" he mumbled thickly. "Next car--somewhere. Good-night! _Good-night!_"