"Yes; when I had you helpless I took but one kiss, I might have held you longer and taken a hundred."
"And by what right did you take that one?" haughtily demanded the outraged young woman, looking at him beneath level brows while the color slowly receded from her face. She had never been kissed by a man other than a blood relation in her life—remember, suspicious reader, that she was from Philadelphia—and she resented this sudden and unauthorized caress with every atom and instinct of her still somewhat conventional being.
"But aren't you half-way engaged to me?" he pleaded in justification, seeing the unwonted seriousness with which she had received his impudent advance. "Didn't you agree to give me a chance?"
"I did say that I liked you very much," she admitted, "no man better, and that I thought you might—"
"Well, then—" he began.
But she would not be interrupted.
"I did not mean that you should enjoy all the privileges of a conquest before you had won me. I will thank you not to do that again, sir."
"It seems to have had a very different effect upon you than it did upon me," replied the man fervently. "I loved you before, but now, since I have kissed you, I worship you."
"It hasn't affected me that way," retorted the girl promptly, her face still frowning and indignant. "Not at all, and—"
"Forgive me, Enid," pleaded the other. "I just couldn't help it. You were so beautiful I had to. I took the chance. You are not accustomed to our ways."