"Honor bright."
A long silence. Miss Blount's fingers are quite deep in the water now, and I think she does not even feel the cold of it.
"He has been engaged to you for three months and more and never wanted to kiss you!" exclaims Roger at last, in a tone expressive of great amazement and greater contempt.
"I don't think I said quite that," returns she, coloring faintly.
"Then"—eagerly—"it was you prevented him!"
"I don't care much about that sort of thing," says Dulce, with a little shrug.
"Don't you? Then I don't believe you care a button about him," replies he, with glad conviction.
"That is mere surmise on your part. Different people"—vaguely—"are different. I don't believe if I had any affection for a person that a mere formal act like kissing would increase the feeling."
"Oh, wouldn't it, though!" says Mr. Dare—"that's all you know about it! You just try it, that's all."
"Indeed I shall do nothing of the kind," says Dulce, with much indignation, and some natural disappointment—that he should recommend such a course to her!