"You ought not to talk to me in that way."
"Don't I know it?" Beauvayse groaned out. He turned over upon his face in the grass, and lay quite still. A shuddering sigh heaved the strong young shoulders from time to time, and his hands clenched and tore at the grasses, "Don't I know it? Lynette, Lynette!"
She longed to touch the close-cropped golden head. Unseen by him, she stretched out a hand timidly and drew it back again, unsatisfied.
"Lynette, Lynette! I'm paying at this moment for every rotten act of headlong folly I've ever committed in my life, and you're making me!" He caught at a fold of her skirt and drew it to him and hid his face in it, kissing it again and again. It was one of the caresses she had been used herself to offer where she most loved. To find yourself being worshipped instead of worshipping is an experience. She touched the golden head now, as the Mother had often touched her own. He caught the hand.
"No, no!" She grew deadly pale, and shivered. "Please let me go. I—I did not——"
She tried to release the hand. He raised himself, and she started at the warm, quivering pressure of his beautiful mouth, scarcely shaded by the young, wheat-golden moustache, upon her cool, sweet flesh. She snatched her hand away with a faint cry, and sprang to her feet, and her cheeks blazed anew as she turned to go.
"You want to leave me? You would punish me like that—just for a kissed hand?"
He barred her way, taller than herself, though he stood upon the sloping lower level. She had learned always to be true in thought and speech.
"I—don't—like to be touched." She said it without looking at him.
"You put your hand upon my head. Why did you do it if you hate me so?"