"You are not angry? You will not be angry? You know I can do nothing else, please say you know."
He came nearer and took both cold little hands in his clasp, bending to her the shining gravity of his regard.
"Did you think me such a selfish animal, my dear, that I would have kissed you when I could not claim you?" he asked. "Did you think I could forget you were Emily Ffrench; even by moonlight?"
Her fair head fell back, her dark eyes questioned his.
"You—mean—"
"I mean that even your uncle can not deny my inherited quality of gentleman. I am no millionaire incognito. I have driven racing cars and managed this factory to earn my living, having no other dependence than upon myself, but my blood is as old as yours, little girl, if that means anything."
"Not to me," she cried, looking up into his eyes. "Not to me, but to him. I cared for you—"
He drew her toward him, unresisting, their gaze still on each other. As from the first, there was no shyness between them, but the strange, exquisite understanding now made perfect.
"I was right to come to you," he declared, after a time. "Right to fear that you were troubled, conscientious lady. But I must go back, or there will be a fine disturbance at the Beach. And I have shattered my other plans to insignificant fragments, or you have. If I did not forget by moonlight that you were Emily Ffrench, I certainly forgot everything else."
She looked up at him, her softly tinted face bright as his own, her yellow hair rumpled into flossy tendrils under the black velvet ribbon binding it.