“You mean,” quickly, “that any girl is furious when she’s kissed.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m not thinking of other girls!”

“Any girl I kissed, then?”

“No”—the Charrier girl’s face flashed before me, and a bitter little laugh escaped me as I spoke—“oh, no.”

“You mean only yourself, then?”

“I suppose so, but——”

You objected, strenuously enough. Why?”

“‘Why?’—”

“Was it”—he was cross-examining me again—“because it was I who kissed you, or,” he paused, “because it was a merely official lover who did so?”

I was caught; there was no direct answer I could make.