“Another,” he commented scornfully; “do you think that I have no other?” Then his weathercock cast of mind whirled again: “I do not want an umbrella,” he said more forcefully, “I want a kiss.”
“I thought that you were distressed over losing it.”
“Not at all; I have already very many others. But a kiss from you I have never yet.”
He seized her hand again, and tearing off the glove with a haste that demolished two buttonholes, pressed the bare cold fingers to his lips and eyes and forehead.
“Oh, I do love you!” he cried in a fresh storm of feeling. “You must love me, because my much must make of you a little.”
Then he kissed her hand many times more, stopping his rapid caresses to gaze upon her with that curious, burning glow firing the sombreness of his eyes the while he held her wrist against the fever of his face.
“If I obeyed myself,” he said hoarsely, “how I would hold you and kiss you. Je vous embrasserais tellement!”
She wondered why she was not distressed and alarmed. Instead the awe at her own emotion that had come upon her spirit in the wood was with her again. Something like strength seemed rising within her, and what it rose against was—strangely enough—not him, but herself. She was conscious of a sympathy for him in place of any fear for herself.
She looked from the window and saw that they were now rolling rapidly through the brightly lighted streets, and a glimpse of the Hof told her that the end was but five minutes further on.
“You answer not,” he said, insistently; “you must say me some word.”