As she met his glance her laughter died away. His face had changed to something unfamiliar and hard. He was pale, his eyes fierce and unloving. For a moment she looked at him, some phrase of inquiry dying on her lips, then she made an attempt to rise, but he drew close to her and caught her hands. She turned her head away, suddenly white and frightened. “June,” he whispered, “do you know how much I love you?” It was a whisper unlike anything she had ever heard before. A whisper within herself responded to it. She sat still, trembling and dizzy, and felt his arms close about her, and her consciousness grow blurred as his lips were pressed on hers. The instant after he had loosed her and they had shrunk from each other in guilty terror, the girl quivering with a rush of half comprehended alarm, the man struggling with contending passions. His face seemed to her full of anger, almost of hatred, as he cried to her, “Go home. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you. We can’t come here again this way. I’m not free to love you. Go home.” He made an imperious gesture for her to go, almost as though driving her from his presence. White as death and dazed by the terrifying strangeness of it all, she scrambled to her feet, and turning from him, set out at a run. She brushed through the bushes, her eyes staring before her, her breast straining with dry sobs. In one hand she still held her little bunch of wild flowers, and with the other she made futile snatches at her skirt, which she had trodden upon and torn. Gaining the end of the wood, she came into the open garden, glaring with sun, deserted and brilliant. Back of it stood the house, shuttered to the afternoon heat and drowsing among its vines. She was about to continue her course over the grass to the open front door, when a footstep behind her, rapid as her own, fell on her ear. For an instant of alert, lightly poised terror, she paused listening, then shot forward across the grass and on to the drive. But her pursuer was fleeter than she. Close at her shoulder she heard him, his voice full of commanding urgency. “Stop, I must speak to you.” She obeyed as she must always obey that voice, and wheeled around on him, pallid and panting. “June, dearest, forgive me. I forgot myself and I’ve frightened you. But we mustn’t meet--that way--any more.” She looked at him without answering. He was as pale as she. The lower part of his face seemed to tremble. He had difficulty in controlling it and speaking quietly. “It’s true what I said,” he went on. “I love you. I’ve done so for months. I was to blame, horribly to blame. You’re so young--such a child. I was the one to blame for it all.” “For what?” she said. “What’s there to blame anybody for? What has happened all of a sudden?” He came closer to her and looked her steadily in the eye. “I am not free,” he said in the lowest audible voice. “I can’t marry you. I am not free.” She repeated with trembling lips, “Not free! Why not?”