‘A bit of nonsense.—Shall I tell you?’ He stepped near, and suddenly caught both her hands,—one of them was trailing her sunshade. ‘Forgive me in advance—will you?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ And she tried, though faintly, to get free.
‘But I will make you—now, refuse!’
His lips had just touched hers, just touched and no more. Rosy red, she trembled before him with drooping eyelids.
‘It meant nothing at all, really,’ he pursued, his voice at its softest. ‘A sham trial—to see whether I was hopelessly conquered or not. Of course I was.’
Nancy shook her head.
‘You dare to doubt it?—I understand now what the old poet meant, when he talked of bees seeking honey on his lady’s lips. That fancy isn’t so artificial as it seemed.’
‘That’s all very pretty’—she spoke between quick breaths, and tried to laugh—‘but you have thrown my hat on the ground. Give it me, and take the ivy for yourself.’
‘I am no Bacchus.’ He tossed the wreath aside. ‘Take the hat; I like you in it just as well.—You shall have a girdle of woodbine, instead.’
‘I don’t believe your explanation,’ said Nancy.