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passionately on mouth and eyes and throat. The warm wind stirred the leafy branches of the willow overhead. The moonlight lay white on the sandhills; above the dull, incessant roaring of the surf, sounded the music of the gramophone from Bentley’s—and with that thin stream of melody came back the memory of Rodney Marsh. Not Marsh as Ann had seen him tonight, but Marsh walking beside her in the spring sunshine as she sat perched up in his saddle, riding Nigger; Marsh chaffing her as she drove the sheep into the race at the yards; Marsh listening to her as she read “Daisy” on the hillside overlooking the sea. And suddenly Ann saw very clearly that disaster had come upon her. She didn’t want to share her life with honest Bob Greenaway, whom she would always trust and respect as a dear friend, but whose kiss had no power to stir her heart to a quicker beat; nor did she desire to take as a life partner Gerald Waring, whom she neither trusted nor respected, but whose kisses now had set her pulses racing furiously. There was another man—a man indifferent to her—and one with whom, in any case, marriage would be impossible. One married into one’s own class, not beneath it.

She disengaged herself from Waring’s close embrace and moved out of the shadow. Other strolling dancers might see them now, and Waring would not dare to kiss her again. She knew that she was shaken, but she had sense enough to assume a calmness she was far from feeling.

“I don’t think we’ll repeat that...that experiment,” she said.

Waring was standing close to her.

“Was that all it was to you?” he asked.