“Please, please stop!”
A gentle pressure would have held her, but she felt that he was releasing her—all but one hand. She sank down upon the seat, trembling. “Oh, you ought not to have done it!” she cried.
He asked, “Why not?”
“No man has ever done that to me before!” The thought of what he had done, the memory of his lips upon her cheek, sent the blood flying there in hot waves; she began to sob: “No, no! You should not have done it!”
“Sylvia!” he pleaded, surprised by her vehemence. “Don’t you realize that you love me?”
“I don’t know! I’m afraid! I must have time!” She was weeping convulsively now. “You will never respect me again!”
“You must not say such a thing as that! It is not true!”
“You will go away and remember it, and you will despise me!”
His voice was calm and very soothing. “Sylvia,” he said, “I have told you that I love you. And I believe that you love me. If that is so, I had a perfect right to kiss you, and you had a perfect right to let me kiss you.”
There he was, sensible as ever; Sylvia found the storm of her emotion dying away. She had time to recall one of the maxims of Lady Dee: “A woman should never let a man see her weeping. It makes her cheeks pale and her nose red.” She resolved that she would stay in the protecting shadows of the summer-house until after he had departed.