So she turned toward him smiling, and swayed gently as she clung to the vine.

“Yes; I have my orders not even to speak to you!  Never again!” she said, with the air of tantalizing.

“Then stay with me a while now,” he said, and lifted slowly to her his appealing face.  She sat down, and screened herself with a little feminine transparency.

“I can’t stay long:  it’s going to rain!”

He cast a wicked glance at the sky from under his hat; there were a few clouds on the horizon.

“And so you are never going to speak to me again?” he said mournfully.

“Never!” How delicious her laughter was.

“I’ll put a ring on your finger to remember me by.”

He lay over in the grass and pulled several stalks.  Then he lifted his eyes beseechingly to hers.

“Will you let me?”

Daphne hid her hands.  He drew himself to her side and took one of them forcibly from her lap.

With a slow, caressing movement he began to braid the grass ring around her finger—­in and out, around and around, his fingers laced with her fingers, his palm lying close upon her palm, his blood tingling through the skin upon her blood.  He made the braiding go wrong, and took it off and began over again.  Two or three times she drew a deep breath, and stole a bewildered look at his face, which was so close to hers that his hair brushed it—­so close that she heard the quiver of his own breath.  Then all at once he folded his hands about hers with a quick, fierce tenderness, and looked up at her.  She turned her face aside and tried to draw her hand away.  His clasp tightened.  She snatched it away, and got up with a nervous laugh.

“Look at the butterflies!  Aren’t they pretty?”

He sprang up and tried to seize her hand again.

“You shan’t go home yet!” he said, in an undertone.

“Shan’t I?” she said, backing away from him.  “Who’s going to keep me?”

“I am,” he said, laughing excitedly and following her closely.

“My father’s coming!” she cried out as a warning.

He turned and looked:  there was no one in sight.

“He is coming—­sooner or later!” she called.

She had retreated several yards off into the sunlight of the meadow.

The remembrance of the risk that he was causing her to run checked him.  He went over to her.

“When can I see you again—­soon?”

He had never spoken so seriously to her before.  He had never before been so serious.  But within the last hour Nature had been doing her work, and its effect was immediate.  His sincerity instantly conquered her.  Her eyes fell.

“No one has any right to keep us from seeing each other!” he insisted.  “We must settle that for ourselves.”

Daphne made no reply.

“But we can’t meet here any more—­with people passing backward and forward!” he continued rapidly and decisively.  “What has happened to-day mustn’t happen again.”