Fitz-Brown turned his attention to the rose bush. The flowers hung their heads dejectedly, as if conscious of their guilty secret.
"How about the 'floral offering'?" he asked.
"I'll make you a present of it," said the countess.
"Thanks, awfully. I say, Kate," Lionel went on, "I don't mind telling you I had all I could do to keep my hands off that half crown. I give you my word if the fellow had brought out a half sovereign I should have snatched it before he knew where he was."
"Don't be too sure," laughed Kate. "I was nearer to him than you were, and I have a good long reach, too! See if I haven't."
She stretched out her arm, bare to the elbow, in bantering challenge. As they faced each other the creamy curve of her forearm lay close along his flanneled biceps, and her slender finger-tips pressed lightly against his neck. Lionel's hand, like a bronze epaulette, closed over her shoulder, and she felt the heat of his palm through the thin muslin, as, with gentle strength, he held her immovable.
Ever since that unforgettable night on the golf links, over a week ago, Lionel had kept his resolution to be no obstacle to Kate Clendennin's prospects. To his idolatrous mind, Kate's ultimatum that she was going to marry Robert Baxter settled the matter. To put her altogether out of his thoughts, out of his dreams, was an impossibility, but he had kept away from her as much as possible; he had even "funked" the morning and evening handshake whenever he could. And now the curve of her warm shoulder in the hollow of his hand, the touch of her finger-tips, the white curve of her wrist so near his lips, stirring a forbidden memory with its subtle fragrance, this was more than Lionel had bargained for. It brought to bear on his resolution a pressure "beyond its guaranteed capacity." And, inasmuch as when a steam boiler explodes it is the engineer and not the boiler that is held to blame, so Lionel must not be censured for what was beyond his control.
Kate, with the supersentience of her sex, felt it coming before Lionel had the least idea of it, and as she waited second by second for the moment when her lover would press his lips passionately to her wrist, all power to draw away left her. She felt his kisses on her bare arm, up and up, and still she did not move, and when at last his lips came to hers, and for a moment he held her unresisting in his arms, Lionel had no disturbing delusion, as on a former occasion, that Kate Clendennin had fainted.
When Kate, by the exercise of that mysterious power of unreasoning possessed only by women, had made Lionel desperately ashamed of having done just what she had wanted him to do, and when Lionel had sufficiently humbled himself, she lifted him to a second best heaven by allowing herself (much against her will) to be persuaded not to renounce him forever. Then, discovering that the air was stifling in the conservatory, she announced her intention of taking a walk. No! On no account would she let Lionel accompany her. He might go anywhere in the world except with her. She was going down by the lake, and she wanted to be alone.
Lionel watched her dejectedly as she crossed the lawn and disappeared through the firs. For ten minutes, fifteen minutes he waited, and then, unable to endure it any longer, and choosing to brave her displeasure rather than remain away from her another minute, Lionel followed the path Kate had taken, and found her sitting in the summer house at the end of the little rustic pier.