had kissed her, drew herself away without a word; but he clasped his arm
about her: "You have not kissed me after all, my darling."

"My kisses are nothing worth now, Ross: their sweetness died out years
ago. Yours are good enough for both;" and she laughed and left him.

He was bitterly chagrined: it seemed a little thing to make him feel so
mortified. That she should leave him willingly, that doing so she should
refuse to grant him so small a favor, when almost all other women--her own
pretty cousins among them--had denied nothing he chose to ask, it was
incomprehensible!

"By Jove! I never cared so much for a little thing in my life as her
leaving me and not caring to kiss me. I swear, I'm a perfect baby about
her! Little, truthful, honest soul! I believe she could make another
creature of me if she cared enough for me to try. There is something
restful in truth and honest purity, after all: one feels safe, and
grounded on a sure place. It's good to have a little fairy lying close in
one's bosom; and I vow I'll have my little brownie there yet, though I
have to go as suitor on a regular courting expedition to my own wife
before I win her heart. Curse this old lover of hers, who bars her heart
against me! And curse my own past follies, which make a good woman fear to
trust me! Marriage is a sell generally, even when a vast amount of
so-called love is brought to the sacrificial altar; so perhaps I shall not
make a bad thing of it if I win my wife's heart after she knows me _au
fond_, instead of in the glamour of gas-light flirtations. Poor little
heart! What a pitiful story it is! How quaintly she writes her pathetic,
desolate history! What a ready pen the little woman holds!" and he took
out her letter again. "I declare, the child has better attractions than
beauty--a lovely, faithful soul."