“Oh, Mr. Clive!” said Helena in a weary tone, but with a suspicious alertness of eye, “I had such a funny experience with Mr. Clive, the other night. I think I’ll have to tell it.” She threw back her head and laughed infectiously: “Oh, it was so funny!”
Clive experienced an uncomfortable thrill. The others gave her immediate attention.
“Don’t hesitate to tell us, Helena,” said Rollins. “We will keep your confidence. And have mercy on our curiosity; that adjective is so vague.”
Helena leaned forward, and clasping her hand about her chin, looked at the company with dancing eyes.
“Probably you all know,” she said, “that not long since I spent five hours in the forest alone with Mr. Clive, talking in the midnight hour. Well, you don’t know that Mr. Clive had previously told me that if he ever sat up all night with me he should kiss me, and several times; so when I took him to the loneliest spot I knew, the intimation was that I expected him to do justice to his principles, wasn’t it?”
“It was, Helena,” said Rollins, with an attempt at facetiousness, “and I hope he did. Served you right.”
“Well, he did not! And I sat not three feet away from him for five hours, and never looked better. How do you suppose I bluffed him off?”
“Oh, come Helena!” said Rollins, who was beginning to feel sorry for Clive.
“You know,” she continued, tossing her head and tapping her foot, much like a spirited race-horse, “I have always said I could do exactly as I pleased with a man, and I can. So it pleased me to play chess with an Englishman, whose only idea of the game is to jump over the board. Well, first I mildly remonstrated with him; then we argued the matter, quite coolly, for he smoked his pipe, and Englishmen are usually cool, you know. My powers of persuasion were not very effective. Then I told him that I was engaged. But as he was, too, he could not see the force of my remark. Well, you’d never guess in the wide world what I did then. I gently led him off on to the subject of religion, and he preached until three o’clock, and forgot all about wanting to kiss me. Now, I call that sort of a man a duffer!” (with an affected drawl.) “What do you think about it?”
There was an intense and uncomfortable silence. Then Clive pushed back his chair abruptly. He walked straight up to Helena, lifted her from her seat, pinioned her arms, and kissed her while one could count thirty.