As they talked, he lay propped on his elbow, watching her fingers, the soft slow movements of which little by little wove a spell over his eyes.  And once again the power of her beauty began to draw him beyond control.  He felt a desire to seize her hands, to crush them in his.  His eyes passed upward along her tapering wrists, the skin of which was like mother-of-pearl; upward along the arm to the shoulder—­to her neck—­to her deeply crimsoned cheeks—­to the purity of her brow—­to the purity of her eyes, the downcast lashes of which hid them like conscious fringes.

An awkward silence began to fall between them.  Daphne felt that the time had come for her to speak.  But, powerless to begin, she feigned to busy herself all the more devotedly with braiding the deep-green circlet.  Suddenly he drew himself through the grass to her side.

“Let me!”

“No!” she cried, lifting her arm above his reach and looking at him with a gay threat.  “You don’t know how.”

“I do know how,” he said, with his white teeth on his red underlip, and his eyes sparkling; and reaching upward, he laid his hand in the hollow of her elbow and pulled her arm down.

“No!  No!” she cried again, putting her hands behind her back.  “You will spoil it!”

“I will not spoil it,” he said, moving so close to her that his breath was on her face, and reaching round to unclasp her hands.

“No!  No!  No!” she cried, bending away from him.  “I don’t want any ring!” and she tore it from her finger and threw it out on the grass.  Then she got up, and, brushing the grass-seed off her lap, put on her hat.

He sat cross-legged on the grass before her.  He had put on his hat, and the brim hid his eyes.

“And you are not going to stay and talk to me?” he said in a tone of reproachfulness, without looking up.

She was excited and weak and trembling, and so she put out her hand and took hold of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging from a branch of the thorn, and laid her cheek against her hand and looked away from him.

“I thought you were better than the others,” he continued, with the bitter wisdom of twenty years.  “But you women are all alike.  When a man gets into trouble, you desert him.  You hurry him on to the devil.  I have been turned out of the church, and now you are down on me.  Oh, well!  But you know how much I have always liked you, Daphne.”

It was not the first time he had acted this character.  It had been a favorite role.  But Daphne had never seen the like.  She was overwhelmed with happiness that he cared so much for her; and to have him reproach her for indifference, and see him suffering with the idea that she had turned against him—­that instantly changed the whole situation.  He had not heard then what had taken place at the dinner.  Under the circumstances, feeling certain that the secret of her love had not been discovered, she grew emboldened to risk a little more.