that provocative
quality of dash she had displayed. The next day at lunch she and I met
like old friends. A huge mass of private thinking during the interval
had been added to our effect upon one another. We talked for a time of
insignificant things.

"What do you do," she asked rather quickly, "after lunch? Take a
siesta?"

"Sometimes," I said, and hung for a moment eye to eye.

We hadn't a doubt of each other, but my heart was beating like a steamer
propeller when it lifts out of the water.

"Do you get a view from your room?" she asked after a pause.

"It's on the third floor, Number seventeen, near the staircase. My
friend's next door."

She began to talk of books. She was interested in Christian Science,
she said, and spoke of a book. I forget altogether what that book was
called, though I remember to this day with the utmost exactness the
purplish magenta of its cover. She said she would lend it to me and
hesitated.

Willersley wanted to go for an expedition across the lake that
afternoon, but I refused. He made some other proposals that I rejected
abruptly. "I shall write in my room," I said.

"Why not write down here?"

"I shall write in my room," I snarled like a thwarted animal, and he
looked at me curiously. "Very well," he said; "then I'll make some notes
and think about that order of ours out under the magnolias."

I hovered about the lounge for a time buying postcards and feverishly
restless, watching the movements of the other people. Finally I went up
to my room and sat down by the windows, staring out. There came a
little tap at the unlocked door and in an instant, like the go of a taut
bowstring, I was up and had it open.

"Here is that book," she said, and we hesitated.

"COME IN!" I whispered, trembling from head to foot.

"You're just a boy," she said in a low tone.

I did not feel a bit like a lover, I felt like a burglar with the
safe-door nearly opened. "Come in," I said almost impatiently, for
anyone might be in the passage, and I gripped her wrist and drew her
towards me.

"What do you mean?" she answered with a faint smile on her lips, and
awkward and yielding.

I shut the door behind her, still holding her with one hand, then turned
upon her--she was laughing nervously--and without a word drew her to me
and kissed her. And I remember that as I kissed her she made a little
noise almost like the purring miaow with which a cat will greet one and
her face, close to mine, be