“I love you! My God, can't you understand?” he gasped. “I can't keep my hands off you. You can't handle a man as you're trying to handle me. I must have some affection from you!”
“Richard! I'll not endure this! I am insulted!”
“My kisses an insult? I'm no ice-water lover. You set me crazy. I can't help myself.”
She wrenched herself from his grasp and faced him, her face filled with outraged fury.
Farr had started to leave the scene. He stopped. The girl was the girl of the red lips and the dark eyes.
“Don't touch me!” she cried. “The only promise you have had from me, Richard, is the one my mother has fairly forced from me. I am trying honestly to like you. I will please my mother and you if I can.”
“That's a devil of a thing to say to a man who loves you as I do,” he declared, with anger.
“That is all I can say just now. But if you use me again as you would pull and haul a girl of the streets, I'll despise you. I give you warning.”
“What sort of books have you been reading, Kate?” he asked, sarcastically. “Where did you get your idea of what love-making is? They don't sing serenades under windows these days. They don't kiss finger-tips and write mush poems. I am going to tell you a few things you ought to know, as a girl engaged to be married.”
Farr stood close by them and in plain sight, but their absorption in their struggle had left them attention only for each other. He knew that if he started away while they were talking his presence would be promptly noted and undoubtedly misjudged.