eternal pact between
themselves. And on the severing of the kiss, terrible to her in her
innocence, she flung herself away from him and ran upstairs. Her flight
was noiseless, as if now no one must know, but he heard the shutting of
a door and the sound of a turning key.

XII

That night Anne was wakened from her sleep by a wisp of a figure that
came slipping to her bedside, announced only by the cautious breathing
of her name:

"Anne! Anne!" her sister was whispering close to her cheek.

"Why, Lyd," said Anne, "what is it?"

The figure was kneeling now, and Anne tried to rise on her elbow to
invite Lydia in beside her. But Lydia put a hand on her shoulder and
held her still.

"Whisper," she said, and then was silent so long that Anne, waiting and
hearing her breathe, stared at her in the dark and wondered at her.

"What is it, lovey?" she asked at length, and Lydia's breathing hurried
into sobs, and she said Anne's name again, and then, getting a little
control of herself, asked the question that had brought her.

"Anne, when people kiss you, is it different if they are men?"

Now Anne did rise and turned the clothes back, but Lydia still knelt and
shivered.

"You've been having bad dreams," said Anne. "Come in here, lovey, and
Anne'll sing 'Lord Rendal.'"

"I mean," said Lydia, from her knees, "could anybody kiss me, except
Farvie, and not have it like Farvie--I mean have it terrible--and I kiss
him back--and--Anne, what would it mean?"

"That's a nightmare," said Anne. "Now you've got all cool and waked up,
you run back to bed, unless you'll get in here."

Lydia put a fevered little hand upon her.

"Anne, you must tell me," she said, catching her breath. "Not a
nightmare, a real kiss, and neither of us wanting to kiss anybody, and
still doing it and not being sorry. Being glad."

She sounded so like herself in one of her fiercenesses that Anne at last
believed she was wholly awake and felt a terror of her own.

"Who was it, Lydia?" she asked sternly. "Who is it you are thinking
about?"

"Nobody," said Lydia, in a sudden curt withdrawal. She rose to her feet.
"Yes, it was a nightmare."

She padded out of the room and softly closed the door, and Anne, left
sitting there, felt unreasoning alarm. She had a moment's determination
to follow her, and then she lay down again and thought achingly of Lydia
who was grown up and was yet a child. And still, Anne knew, she had to
come to woman's de