“You are mine, Mysie.  Mine!” and he kissed her budded lips in an ecstasy of passion and warm-blooded feeling, while a thousand fevers seemed to course through him as he felt the contact of her body and her warm, eager lips on his.  Blinded and delirious, he kissed her again and again in an impassioned burst of fervor, passion scorching his blood and filling his whole heart with the enjoyment of possession.  She closed her eyes, and her head touched his shoulder, while the faint scent of her hair and its soft caressing touch upon his cheek maddened him to a fury of love.

“Say you are mine, Mysie!  Say you are mine!” he cried, and his voice was strange and hoarse and dry with the desire within him.  He felt her body yielding as it relaxed in his arms, as if in answer to some unspoken demand, and in a moment he realized himself and started back, hot shame surging over his face and conquering the passion in his blood.  In that strange mad moment he had felt capable of anything—­powerful, overmastering, relentless in his desires; and now—­weak, shame-stricken and helpless.  Ere he could say anything, Mysie had come to herself with a shock, and started away over the moor as if possessed by something that was mysterious and terrible.

That had happened a year ago, and though Robert sought to learn when she was in the village, and often watched her from a safe place where he was not seen, delighting his eyes with the sight of her figure, and feeling again the same hot shame come over him, as he had known that day on the moor, yet he had never met her near enough to speak to her, but had worshiped her at a distance and grown to love and desire her more and more with every day that passed.

He dreamed dreams around her, but was afraid to encounter her again.  This strange mad love burned in his blood, until at times he was almost sick with desire and love.  Every moor-bird called her name; every flower held the shyness of her face; the clouds of peaceful sunsets showed the glory of her hair, and the quiet, steadfast stars possessed the wonder of her eyes.  The madness of the passionate moment of possession on the moor was at once his most treasured memory and his intensest shame.

As for Mysie, since she had not heard any more from Robert nor even seen him for almost a year, she felt quite flattered by the attentions of Peter Rundell.  It was not that she was in love with either of the young men.  Her nature was of the kind that is in love with love itself, and was not perhaps capable of a great love, such as had frightened her, when Robert, taken off his guard, had let her glimpse a strong, overmastering passion and a soul capable of great things.  Already she dreamed of a grand house of which she would be mistress as Peter’s wife, as she stood in the silence of her own room, pirouetting and smirking, and drawing pictures of herself in fine garments and stately carriage, playing the Lady Bountiful of the district.