He laid his face against their clasped hands; her own tightened.
"You mustn't speak that way--" She dropped her flushed face; he lifted it, and kissed her again.
When he released her, she leaned back against the silver birch, head lowered, silent and did not move her hands from the moss as he bent and kissed them, too.
When at last she found her voice, she spoke so low that he bent his head closer to listen.
"That is the one imprudence I have never before committed--contact with any man. You must not do it to me again.... I don't know how to take it. I _can't_ love you. You know that." She looked up at him. "Don't you know it?"
"You _do_ know that I can't; don't you? And that you cannot really love me?"
"I suppose it ought to be that way; but it isn't."
And now the moment had come to make her desire a certainty--and finish what she had set herself to do--for this man's sake. She said:
"You _can't_ care for me, Jim! What am I anyway? A shallow, pleasure-loving nobody, who sells her frivolous social gifts because it is pleasanter and easier to make a living that way than to exercise a decent profession. How can such a man as you really fall in love with such a woman?"
She rose to her feet and stood leaning against the tree; and he rose, too, releasing her fingers.
She touched her hair, passed her hands slowly over her eyes, let them fall idly by her side; then, after a moment, looked up at him, faintly smiling.
"Melodrama is no use, is it?" she said. "You are not impressed by it; I can't act it. Life is less serious than the stage. Shall we come back together along the road to yesterday, and find our old, safe footing? ... And--shall I forgive you what you've done this summer day?"
"I want you to marry me," he said between compressed lips. "I'll make good, yet."
"What!" she exclaimed in apparent amazement. "_You!_"
How she forced the light laughter she never understood; and she saw her gayety bring the blood to his face like a whip lash.
"Marry! No, I won't marry you," she laughed. "Mercy on the man! Does he suppose I wish to marry a professional entertainer?--a generally useful gentleman--a big, strong, healthy, well-built, intelligent fellow, too indolent to rouse himself and make a respectable living?--too self-indulgent to start in a manly career and fight the world--take it by the throat and shake a decent living out of its sinful old pockets?"