"A poem! It was the Devil's own poetry you breathed into me! What a poor mad fool I became! You saw how easily I gave my work up, how I sulked up to London, fighting with it all the time, with this madness--this----" "Dear me," she said, "what an Adam you are! My dear Victor, isn't it--you are very, very young. There is no need for you to manufacture a huge tragedy out of a woman's kiss." "What else is it but a tragedy," he demanded, "the kiss that is a lie--or worse? You brought me here, you let me hold you in my arms, you filled my brain with mad thoughts, you drove everything good and worth having out of life, you filled it with what? Yourself! And then--you pat me on the cheek and tell me to come, and be kissed some other day, when you feel in the humour, a wet afternoon, perhaps, or when you are feeling bored, and want to hunt up a few new emotions! It may be the way with you and your kind. I call it hellish!" "Well," she said, "tell me exactly what it is that you want?" "To be laughed at--as you did before?" he answered fiercely. "Never mind. It was the truth. You have lain in my arms, you came willingly, your lips have been mine! You belong to me!" "To be quite explicit," she murmured, "you think I ought to marry you." "Yes!" he declared firmly. "A kiss is a promise! You seem to want to live as a 'poseuse,' to make playthings of your emotions and mine. I wanted to build up my life firmly, to make it a stable and a useful thing. You came and wrecked it, and you won't even help me to rebuild." "Let us understand one another thoroughly," she said. "Your complaint is, then, that I will not marry you?" The word, the surprising, amazing word, left her lips again so calmly that Macheson was staggered a little, confused by its marvellous significance. He was thrown off his balance, and she smiled as a wrestler who has tripped his adversary. Henceforth she expected to find him easier to deal with. "You know--that it is not that--altogether," he faltered. "What is it that you want then?" she asked calmly. "There are not many men in the world who have kissed--even my hand. There are fewer still--whom I have kissed. I thought that I had been rather kind to you." "Kind!" he threw out his arms with a despairing gesture. "You call it kindness, the drop of magic you pour into a man's veins, the touch of your body, the breath of your lips vouchsafed for a second, the elixir of a new life. What is it to you? A caprice! A little dabbling in the emotions, a device to make a few minutes of the long days pass more smoothly. Perhaps it's the way in your world, this! You cheat yourself of a whole-hearted happiness by making physiological experiments, frittering away the great chance out of sheer curiosity--or something worse. And we who don't understand the game--we are the victims!" "Really," she said pleasantly, "you are very eloquent." "And you," he said, "are----"