He let her go and she sprang away and upright, as a bow stick released. He let her go, and stared at her where she stood panting fiercely, and stared in more surprise when, checking her sobbing breaths, she spoke again. In their struggle her hair had loosened and it fell, half-bound, in a heavy cascade upon one shoulder and down her breast. The starlight gleamed on it and on her dark face framed against it. She had a wild look, as if her mild beauty had suddenly gone gipsy; her sobbing voice had a wild tone, and he noticed the drop back to the "thee" long absent from her speech: "Ah, this to happen!" she cried. "This! Ah, what a thing I must be to thee!" The strangeness and the violence of her distress astonished him. What had he done? Tried for a kiss? In the name of all the kisses snatched from pretty girls--! "Why, Ima?" was all he could say. "Ima?" She dropped to the ground with a collapsed action as though, oppressed as she was, standing were insupportable. She covered her face with her hands, ceased her sobbing breaths; but he saw her trembling in all her frame. Rising, he went to her, put a hand on her shoulder, and, at the convulsive movements he felt, made deeper the contrition for his careless act that her distress now caused him. "Ima, what have I done? Only tried to kiss you in fun. A sudden, silly thing--I don't know why--I never meant it--but only a kiss in fun." He waited a moment, grieved for her, half-vexed with her--then had his answer and was faced with emotions as sudden and unexpected as when a moment before, without premeditation, he had her struggling in his arms. She drew a deep breath and answered him. "That is it--in fun!" she said. She threw out her arms across her raised knees--the palms upward, the fingers curved in a most desolate action. "In fun!" she said intensely. "I would to God--I would to God thou hadst done it in passion." He came in front of her. "Tell me what it is I have done to you," he said firmly. The intensity went from her voice. She spoke then and thenceforward very softly, as if she were making explanation to a child, and in her answer she used again the term that went with the days of the "thee" and "thou" now returned to her. "Used me," she answered him softly, "used me as any wanton is to be used, little master." He cried, "Ima! After all these years we have known each other--a kiss in fun!" But she went on: "What maids are kissed in fun? That a man weds does he use so? That the sisters of such as thou art does he so use? That give him cause for regard does he so use? What maids, then?" and answered herself, "Such as I am!" "Oh!" he cried, wounded with pity for her, "Oh, Ima--Ima, dear, don't talk like that. What can you mean? I am sorry--sorry! Forgive me!"