She nodded.
"I am so sorry," he exclaimed. "But when I touched you I forgot—everything!"
She smiled gently at him. "I didn't dream you cared for me," she said.
He laughed with a boisterousness that irritated her. "I'd never have dared tell you," replied he, "if I hadn't seen that you cared for me."
Her nerves winced, but she contrived to make her tone passable as she inquired: "Why do you say that?"
"Oh—the day in the garden—the day I came pleading for Grant. I saw it in your eyes—You remember."
Margaret could not imagine what he had misinterpreted so flatteringly to himself. But what did it matter? How like ironic fate, to pierce him with a chance shaft when all the shafts she had aimed had gone astray!
She was startled by his seizing her again. At his touch she flamed. "Don't!" she cried imperiously. "I don't like it!"
He laughed, held her the more tightly, kissed her half a dozen times squarely upon the lips. "Not that tone to me," said he. "I shall kiss you when I please."
She was furiously angry; but again her nerves were trembling, were responding to those caresses, and even as she hated him for violating her lips, she longed for him to continue to violate them. She started up. "Let us go," she cried.