"The fact that you're so damnably young," he muttered. She made a little face at him. "I'm not, really. I'm one of those persons who are born grown-up, you know. Besides, it's a fault that will disappear in time." "Exactly! And before you know it, my dear. "'The nightingale that in the branches sang--ah, whence and whither flown again, who knows!' "You oughtn't to be here with me," he said abruptly. "You ought to be back there, playing with the little boys and girls." "But if the boys and girls bore me--?" "Do they?" he demanded. "Those chaps you dance and flirt with--?" Joan made him the present of a very special smile. "Perhaps that was to make other people--jealous." "You darling!" he said under his breath; but still he did not touch her. "'Love among the Ruins' really isn't very beautiful," he said after a moment, "or very natural, either--as my sister-in-law was very good to point out to me only this morning!" Joan flushed. So Mrs. Desmond was taking not only a passive but an active interest in her affairs! "Your sister-in-law is needlessly solicitous. I'm not a child like Betty. I know exactly what I am doing." He leaned toward her. "Do you? Do you, I wonder? Joan! Look at me! _Do_ you know what you are doing--to me?" The darkness left only the white outline of their faces visible to each other. He struck a match, in order to see her better. For a moment she tried to meet his eyes. They frightened her even while they drew her. The blood began to sing in her ears, as it had when he touched her hand. She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold her--and at the same time she wanted to run away and hide. Their long gaze seemed to let down some barrier within her, to loosen curious impulses.... Why did he not take her, and have done with it? "No," he muttered, as if she had spoken, "Come!" Her body made a helpless movement toward him.... Then the match burnt his fingers and he dropped it. "I--I thought you said you had a present for me," she quavered, with a little breathless laugh. She suspected what the present was, and she wanted to get this queerly painful scene over. But the velvet case he drew out of his pocket was too large for a ring. It contained a flexible chain of platinum for her wrist, set with jewels which glittered in the dusk. "Oh!--oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed. Even Stefan Nikolai had never given her anything as splendid as this. "May I put it on?" asked Desmond quietly. She held out her hand in delight; and suddenly he had seized it and pushing her sleeve out of the way, was pressing his lips to her inner arm above the elbow, kissing it hungrily, fiercely, as if he could never have done. She gasped and shrank a little. Getting engaged was not at all as she had pictured it. "Wh--what a funny place to kiss me," she heard herself quavering, "when I've got a perfectly good mouth!" After that she ceased for once to analyze her sensations....