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silence through the open gates, parking it neatly in front of the front door of the oast-house.
    “I’m sorry,” she said at last.
    He exploded then, blowing up with a comprehensiveness that left her startled and inwardly applauding. Words flowed out of him, berating her, and whoever had taken it upon themselves to instruct her in the art of driving and finally to the maniac who had seen fit to pass her as fit to drive on the public highway.
    “I’m sorry,” she said again.
    “Sorry! You shouldn’t be allowed out by yourself! If kissing that fellow can put you in such a dither, you ought to be a candidate for a nunnery!”
    “I was angry,” she admitted.
    His steely grey eyes glinted dangerously. “Indeed? You didn’t look particularly angry to me. Was your stepmother right after all? Was that how you got your famous West End part?”
    “No!”
    “Okay, so you were angry. It didn’t stop you from getting back into the car and driving him to Canterbury, did it?”
    Sarah bit her lip. “I did suggest he got a taxi,” she excused herself. “I’m very sorry, Robert.”
    “Sorry because you nearly hit me?”
    “N-not only for that,” she said.
    She felt him tense beside her, but she was too busy trying to sort out her own emotions to wonder at it. He must have seen Alec kissing her, she thought in dismay, and somehow that was the last straw in a trying afternoon.
    “I can’t think why he came!” she burst out. “All he did was to upset my father and—and—”
    “And you?”
    Sarah nodded. He put his hand under her chin and turned her face towards him. She was astonished to see that he was smiling and wondered what could have amused him. She herself could see nothing funny in anything that had happened.
    “I—I don’t kiss casually. I never have! You’ve got to believe me! ”
    “Why?”
    She tried to avoid his glance, but there was no escape from the gentle pressure of his fingers on her chin. “I— I don’t particularly like him!”
    “Perhaps you’ll be more free with your kisses with me,” he said against her lips. Her whole being leapt to meet him. His touch was ecstasy and with a sob her hands slipped up behind his shoulders and she pulled him closer still. Then, just as suddenly, Robert had pushed her away from him. “I thought so!” he said with contempt. “Don’t bother to pretend that you didn’t want that!”
    Sarah felt herself shaking, but she was too proud to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much he had hurt her.
    “I won’t!” she declared.
    She had no way of reading the expression in his eyes. It was enough that his arms were about her again, pulling her roughly against him, and then she gave herself up to the bliss of his deepening kiss.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    SARAH sat in the car for a long time after Robert had left her. So this was what it felt like to be in love! She should have known, she could have known by the unbearable excitement she had felt whenever he had come near her, but that he could turn her inside out and upside down by merely holding her close and kissing her face and lips, she had not known.
    Her cheeks flamed with the memory of how eagerly she had responded to him. And he had not kissed her out of love. She thought with despair of how he had asked her again what Alec Farne meant to her and how once again she had told him nothing, but she wasn’t sure that he had believed her, even then. Surely, though, he would know that she had never kissed Alec, or anyone else, like that ! Even the memory brought a feeling of sheer delight to constrict her breath and to send her blood cavorting round her veins. How strange that Robert Chaddox could do this to her, of all the men she knew. Why, in other circumstances, she might not even have liked him!
    When she felt more or less normal again, she got out of the car and went inside, trying to feel her usual self and concerned about her father, and all the things that she ordinarily felt. It was easy enough to