“Pink’s the only wear,” declared the girl gayly.  With delicate fingers she detached a little luxuriant twig of the bloom from her breast, and set it in the place where the rose had been.  Her face was close to his.  He could feel her hands above his heart.

“Please,” she breathed.

“What?” He was playing for time and reason.

“For Kathleen Pierce.  Please.”

His hand closed over hers.  “You are bribing me.”

If she said it again, she knew that he would kiss her.  So she spoke, with lifted face and eyes of uttermost supplication.  “For me.  Please.”

Men had kissed Esme Elliot before; for she had played every turn of the game of coquetry.  Some she had laughed to scorn and dismissed; some she had sweetly rebuked, and held to their adoring fealty.  She had known the kiss of headlong passion, of love’s humility, of desperation, even of hot anger; but none had ever visited her lips twice.  The game, for her, was ended with the surrender and the avowal; and she protected herself the more easily in that her pulses had never been stirred to more than the thrill of triumph.

In Hal Surtaine’s arms she was playing for another stake.  So intent had she been upon her purpose that the guerdon of the modern Venus Victrix, the declaration of the lover, was held in the background of her mind.  For a swift, bewildering moment, she felt his lips upon hers, the gentlest, the tenderest pressure, instantly relaxed:  then the sudden knowledge of him for what he was, a loyal and chivalrous gentleman thus beguiled, burned her with a withering and intolerable shame.  Simultaneously she felt her heart go out to him as never yet had it gone to any man, and in that secret shock to her maidenhood, the coquette in her waned and the woman waxed.

She drew back, quivering, aghast.  With all the force of this new and tumultuous emotion, she hoped for her own defeat:  yearned over him that he should refuse that for which she had unworthily pressed.  Yet, such is the perversity of that strange struggle against the great surrender, that she gathered every power of her sex to gain the dreaded victory.  By an effort she commanded her voice, releasing herself from his arms.

“Wait.  Don’t speak to me for a minute,” she said hoarsely.

“But I must speak, now,—­dear, dearest.”

“Am—­am I that to you?” The feline in her caught desperately at the opportunity.

“Always.  From the first.”

“But—­you forgot.”

“Let me atone with the rest of my life for that treason.”  He laughed happily.

“You keep your promise, then, to the little girl?” At her feet lay the galley proof.  Birdlike she darted down upon it, seized, and tore it half across.  “No:  you do it,” she commanded, thrusting it into his hand.

No longer was he master of himself.  The kiss had undermined him.  “Must I?” he said.

Victorious and aghast, she yet smiled into his face.  “I knew I could believe in you,” she cried.  “You’re a true knight, after all.  I declare you my Knight-Editor.  No well-equipped journalistic partnership should be without one.”