Aye, so much for Andy! But besides the witness there are the parties. Besides the person who catches you kissing, there is the person you kiss. There is also you, who kiss. All questions of value are not decided by the impression you chance to make on the witness. The bystander may see most of the game; the players settle the stakes. "Perverse!" was Harry's verdict on the whole affair, given from his own point of view; not only perverse that he should have been caught--if he had been--but no less perverse that he should have done the thing, that he should have wanted to do it, and that he should feel as he now did about it. Perhaps the last element was really the most perverse of all, because it set up in his mind an opposition to what was plainly the only course open to him from Isobel's point of view. (Here the question of the third value came in.) That was surely open and avowed penitence--a sincere apology, as serious or as light as was demanded or would be accepted. She could not pretend that she felt outraged. In truth they had shared in the indiscretion and been partners in the peccadillo. An apology not too abject, a hint at the temptation, gracefully put, to serve for excuse, a return to the safe ground of friendship--and a total oblivion of the incident! Or, if they must think of it at all, it would be without words--with a smile, maybe, in a few days' time; that is how we feel about some not serious, by no means unpleasant, little scrape that is well over. Harry had been in a good many such--perverse but not fatal, annoying at the time, not necessarily things on which the memory dwelt with pain in after days; far from it sometimes, in fact. That was the right thing to do, and the right way to regard the episode. But Harry was conscious of a complication--in the circumstances and in his own feelings. Owing to his engagement with Vivien he must go on frequenting Isobel's society; owing to the memory of his kiss the necessity was not distasteful. Well, these little complications must be unravelled; the first difficulty faced, the second ignored or overcome. He arrived at so clear, sound, and prudent a resolution thus to minimise the effects of his indiscretion that he felt almost more virtuous than if he had been discreet. So the parties, as well as the witness, were assessed. But who had put into his hand the standard whereby to assess Isobel? She might measure by another rule.