“Richard!  I’ll not endure this!  I am insulted!”

“My kisses an insult?  I’m no ice-water lover.  You set me crazy.  I can’t help myself.”

She wrenched herself from his grasp and faced him, her face filled with outraged fury.

Farr had started to leave the scene.  He stopped.  The girl was the girl of the red lips and the dark eyes.

“Don’t touch me!” she cried.  “The only promise you have had from me, Richard, is the one my mother has fairly forced from me.  I am trying honestly to like you.  I will please my mother and you if I can.”

“That’s a devil of a thing to say to a man who loves you as I do,” he declared, with anger.

“That is all I can say just now.  But if you use me again as you would pull and haul a girl of the streets, I’ll despise you.  I give you warning.”

“What sort of books have you been reading, Kate?” he asked, sarcastically.  “Where did you get your idea of what love-making is?  They don’t sing serenades under windows these days.  They don’t kiss finger-tips and write mush poems.  I am going to tell you a few things you ought to know, as a girl engaged to be married.”

Farr stood close by them and in plain sight, but their absorption in their struggle had left them attention only for each other.  He knew that if he started away while they were talking his presence would be promptly noted and undoubtedly misjudged.

He set his finger between the leaves of his book and took his hat in his hand.

“Your pardon!” he pleaded.  “I stumbled here quite by accident.  Please suspend conversation on private matters until I can walk out of earshot.”

He stared straight into the eyes of the girl and once more received from her that frank and wondering gaze which had touched him so strangely when he had seen her first on the broad highway.  His face was white under the tan.  His hands trembled as he replaced his hat.  In his heart he was saying farewell to her and his eyes expressed some of his emotion.

“You may take your own time, sir,” said the girl.  “This gentleman and I have finished our conversation.”  She passed Farr, looking him up and down with increasing curiosity and dawning recognition, and when her escort called to her impatiently, she caught her skirts around her and ran toward the glade where the others of the party were chattering over their hampers.

The lover started away slowly and sullenly on her trail, with only a glance at this blundering stranger.

“No, they do not sing serenades under windows any more—­nor has the stone age returned with its love-making manners,” remarked Farr, his lips trembling and his emotion still in his eyes.  “There are some manners which ware worse, however, than knocking maidens down with clubs.”

The other man snapped himself around on his heels.

“Damn you, you’re that fresh hobo!  I don’t forget a man who shoots off low-down sneers at me.  Here!  You come back here!  I want to ask a few questions, my man.”