and with the smile came two dimples into the peach-blow cheeks.
"Bessie!" John cried, with a welcoming shout of incoherent joy. "Bessie!"
But his joy was speedily swallowed up in the gloom of mortifying reflections. Could it be that his love was so inconstant as to transfer itself in a few days from Marien Dounay to Bessie Mitchell, and if it did, what was such love worth? Besides, how could he love Bessie as he had loved Marien. There was no fire in her. As yet, she was only a girl. But at this juncture a memory came floating in of that day on the Cliff House rocks, when some vague impulse, which he thought to be sympathy, had made him draw Bessie's face up to his and kiss it. Now, as he recalled it, the touch of her lips was the touch of a woman; and her look that puzzled him then,—why, it was the look of love!
Hampstead leaped up excitedly. Bessie was a woman, and she loved him! And he loved her! But how could he have been such a fool as to think that he loved Marien?
"Passion," he told himself scornfully, "mere passion."
"She was the first ripe woman I ever touched, and I fell for her! That's all," he muttered. "But, how could I ever, ever, ever have done it?"
Heaping bitter self-reproaches, he took his bewildered head in his hands, while he wrestled with the humiliating chain of ruminations. Naturally enough, it was the memory of a speech of Marien's which afforded him his first clue.
"In what you have just been saying, you have given me a character," she had replied to one of his advances. "If I could play that part always, I should be what you are in love with, and you would love me always; but I cannot play it always; I can play it seldom. I play it now for an hour and then perhaps never again."
