"Am I so dreadfully ugly, John, that you can't bear to have me near you?"
"Lola!" he exclaimed passionately, "what are you doing? What is it that has changed you so? If you love me what reason have you for putting me off with one foolish excuse after another? What is it that you want?"
"I know that I ask a great deal, dear," she replied tenderly, "but I want a love great enough for anything."
"My love is great enough, Lola," said John, as he once more tried gently to remove her arms from about his neck. "Please don't try to make it any greater until you are ready to return it."
She looked up again into his face and laughed at the cold expression she saw there, then suddenly drew him close, her arms straining about him, and kissed him, not as a young girl timidly kisses the man she loves, but with the kiss of a passionate woman. He was a man, like other men, and the man in him took fire in a moment, and he returned her kiss and would have drawn her still closer into his arms, but with a little low laugh she freed herself, and stepping back of the table shook her finger at him playfully.
She laughed lightly, mockingly, as he stood there, already ashamed of the sudden fierce feeling that had mastered him, and full of disgust of himself for the physical passion that had for the first time entered into any of his thoughts toward her.
"It is all right, John," she continued, feeling that she had him at a disadvantage. "It is all settled. The marriage is postponed, but only for a little, little while. Now run along, and come back late this afternoon to see Dr. Crossett, and if you will promise to be very good you may stay to dinner."
"I will, Lola, thank you," replied John, "but--but I wish you would tell me what you are going to do this afternoon?"
"Not--Lola! You are not going to that Harlan woman's house?"
"Why, John! You know that you told me you didn't like to have me go there?" She looked at him so innocently that he felt himself a brute to continue, but he forced himself to go on.
"The woman is hardly respectable, and the crowd she has hanging around her house are not proper acquaintances for a girl like you. I haven't got over the shock of seeing you in that woman's carriage yesterday."