He gave way at last, and she allowed herself to be soothed and caressed.

Then, when she seemed to have recovered herself, he gave her a tragic-comic account of the three weeks' engagement, and the manner in which it had been broken off: caustic enough, one might have thought, to satisfy the most unfriendly listener.

Daphne heard it all quietly.
Then her maid came, and she donned a tea-gown.
When Roger returned, after dressing, he found her still abstracted.
"I suppose you kissed her ?" she said abruptly, as they stood by the fire together.
He broke out in laughter and annoyance, and called her a little goose, with his arm round her.
But she persisted.

"You did kiss her ?" "Well, of course I did! What else is one engaged for ?" "I'm certain she wished for a great deal of kissing!" said Daphne, quickly.
Roger was silent.

Suddenly there swept through him the memory of the scene in the orchard, and with it an admission--wrung, as it were, from a wholly unwilling self--that it had remained for him a scene unique and unapproached.