"As many times as you like, of course," he said. "But I shall not get so many opportunities. You will be too much sought after, as usual."
She sighed.
"That is the one disadvantage of being engaged to you," she said.
"Twice, then. The second and the eleventh waltz."
He nodded, and stood with the same absent preoccupation in his eyes; and she drew a little closer to him still; and as her eyes dwelt on his face with love's hunger in them, she whispered:
"You have not kissed me yet, Stafford."
He bent and kissed her, and her lips clung to his in that most awful of appeals, the craving, the prayer from the soul that loves to the soul that refuses love in return.
"Ah, Stafford, if—if it were all over, and we were away in the country somewhere?"
"Why don't we go?" he asked, with absolute indifference to the social plots and schemes which were being woven round him.
She laughed.
"In a little while! Sir Stephen wants a change; he is looking rather fagged—"