Her eyes filled with tears which she would not let fall, and she said, “You are very kind to say so:  I will be more careful in future.  But I must go now.”  He waited in quite an eager expectancy to see if she would kiss him.  “Take good care of yourself, and be sure I shall come by the first train;” and she started to leave the bedside.

He caught her dress and drew her toward him, holding her hands:  “Is that all, Percy?  Is there nothing else?”

“I think not, Ross,” she said, doubtingly, but coloring painfully.

“Kiss me good-bye, Percy.”  She held down her face instantly, and when he had kissed her, drew herself away without a word; but he clasped his arm about her:  “You have not kissed me after all, my darling.”

“My kisses are nothing worth now, Ross:  their sweetness died out years ago.  Yours are good enough for both;” and she laughed and left him.

He was bitterly chagrined:  it seemed a little thing to make him feel so mortified.  That she should leave him willingly, that doing so she should refuse to grant him so small a favor, when almost all other women—­her own pretty cousins among them—­had denied nothing he chose to ask, it was incomprehensible!

“By Jove!  I never cared so much for a little thing in my life as her leaving me and not caring to kiss me.  I swear, I’m a perfect baby about her!  Little, truthful, honest soul!  I believe she could make another creature of me if she cared enough for me to try.  There is something restful in truth and honest purity, after all:  one feels safe, and grounded on a sure place.  It’s good to have a little fairy lying close in one’s bosom; and I vow I’ll have my little brownie there yet, though I have to go as suitor on a regular courting expedition to my own wife before I win her heart.  Curse this old lover of hers, who bars her heart against me!  And curse my own past follies, which make a good woman fear to trust me!  Marriage is a sell generally, even when a vast amount of so-called love is brought to the sacrificial altar; so perhaps I shall not make a bad thing of it if I win my wife’s heart after she knows me au fond, instead of in the glamour of gas-light flirtations.  Poor little heart!  What a pitiful story it is!  How quaintly she writes her pathetic, desolate history!  What a ready pen the little woman holds!” and he took out her letter again.  “I declare, the child has better attractions than beauty—­a lovely, faithful soul.”

But though he was tender of her in his thoughts, he was a hard master that night:  everything went wrong, nothing pleased or contented him, and the sullen, much-tried servant at last announced that with the morning he would leave his master to his own devices.

“Go, and be damned to you!” was the savage reply; and the man took him at his word, decamping, after making a few necessary arrangements, as soon after breakfast as he could.