Her body made a helpless movement toward him....
Then the match burnt his fingers and he dropped it.
"I—I thought you said you had a present for me," she quavered, with a little breathless laugh. She suspected what the present was, and she wanted to get this queerly painful scene over.
But the velvet case he drew out of his pocket was too large for a ring. It contained a flexible chain of platinum for her wrist, set with jewels which glittered in the dusk.
"Oh!—oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed. Even Stefan Nikolai had never given her anything as splendid as this.
"May I put it on?" asked Desmond quietly.
She held out her hand in delight; and suddenly he had seized it and pushing her sleeve out of the way, was pressing his lips to her inner arm above the elbow, kissing it hungrily, fiercely, as if he could never have done.
She gasped and shrank a little. Getting engaged was not at all as she had pictured it.
"Wh—what a funny place to kiss me," she heard herself quavering, "when I've got a perfectly good mouth!"
After that she ceased for once to analyze her sensations....