‘How dare you interfere?’ she said.  ’How dare you meddle with my affairs?’ She struck herself upon the breast.  She blazed with passion.

‘He kissed you!’ said Jim.  ‘I couldn’t stand that!’

‘And what of me?  If I do not object, what then?’

‘Aurora!’

‘Am I my own mistress?  Are my inclinations to count for something?’

Jim had recovered himself.  He felt cold, sobered.  He shook the hands off him, ‘Your inclinations count for everything!’ he said with composure.  ’I acted on impulse.  I beg your pardon, Aurora.  I’ll apologize to Carrol if he wishes it.  I’ve had too much rum, Tim; I acted like a fool.’

’Tush, man, ‘twas nothin’!  You didn’t hit me,’ said the Irishman cheerfully.  ‘Don’t shpake iv it.  I disarved what I didn’t get fer kissin’ your sweet, heart, any-how.’

Aurora’s anger fell from her suddenly, and she moved away.  She played no more that night, and was markedly subdued in her manner, turning an anxious eye upon Done every now and again, and Jim, to carry off the situation, was much too free with the liquor and uncommonly friendly with everybody.

‘You took my temper like a gentleman, Jimmy dear,’ said Aurora, coming behind him when he sat alone.  She was bidding for reconciliation.

‘I ought to have known better, Joy,’ he answered.  I was an idiot!’

’No, dear, you were jealous, and that is an easy thing for a woman to forgive.’

‘I don’t think I was even jealous.’

‘Then you should have been!’ she said, with a flash of anger.

’Then, if I should have been, I was jealous—­furiously, murderously jealous!’

‘Sure, how could you blame the poor boy,’ she murmured, winding an arm about his neck, ’wid the love of the dear ould sod hot in the heart iv him?  ‘Twasn’t a lover’s kiss he gave me, darlin’, but a patriot’s.’

‘This is a lover’s, Joy!’ He kissed her softly.

All the same, flushed with liquor though he was, he was conscious that his attack on Carrol had been prompted by a meaner impulse than jealousy, and was more a manifestation of the rum-flown arrogance of a man fighting for a prize in the possession of which he felt a large conceit.  He was conscious, too, that there was little of a true lover’s ardour in the kiss he gave her.  But men are deceivers ever, and never so cunning in deceit as when love has slipped from their hearts.  To be sure, Jim had the grace to be ashamed of all this in certain moods, but acknowledgment of the sin was not followed by renunciation.  Aurora’s flash of passion was probably due to the instinct that warned her of the fading of Done’s love for her.