of his ambition to join the Bengal
Lancers and he boasted of the exploits of the St. James' Football
Fifteen. Dora giggled the minutes away, and at five minutes to twelve
they were on a seat, screened against humanity's intrusion. Michael
listened with quickening pulses to the thump of tennis balls in the
distance. At last he heard the first stroke of twelve and looked
apprehensively towards Dora. Four more strokes sounded, but Michael
still delayed. He wondered if Alan would keep his promise. He had heard
no scream of dismay or startled giggle from the shrubbery. Then as the
final stroke of midday crashed forth, he flung his arms round Dora,
pressed her to him and in his confusion kissed very roughly the tilted
tip of her nose.

"Oh, you cheek!" she gasped.

Then Michael kissed her lips, coldly though they were set against his
love.

"I say, kiss me," he whispered, with a strange new excitement crimsoning
his cheeks and rattling his heart so loudly that he wondered if Dora
noticed anything.

"Shan't!" murmured Dora.

"Do."

"Oh, I couldn't," she said, wriggling herself free. "You have got a
cheek. Fancy kissing anyone."

"Dora, I'm frightfully gone on you," affirmed Michael, choking with the
emotional declaration. "Are you gone on me?"

"I like you all right," Dora confessed.

"Well then, do kiss me. You might. Oh, I say, do."

He leaned over and sought those unresponsive lips that, mutely cold, met
his. He spent a long time trying to persuade her to give way, but Dora
protested she could not understand why people kissed at all, so silly as
it was.

"But it's not," Michael protested. "Or else everybody wouldn't want to
do it."

However, it was useless to argue with Dora. She was willing to put her
curly golden head on his shoulder, until he nearly exploded with
sentiment; she seemed not to mind how often he pressed his lips to hers;
but all the time she was passive, inert, drearily unresponsive. The
deeper she seemed to shrink within herself and the colder she stayed,
the more Michael felt inclined to hurt her, to shake her roughly, almost
to draw blood from, those soft lifeless lips. Once she murmured to him
that he was hurting her, and Michael was in a quandary between an
overwhelming softness of pity and an exultant desire to make her cry out
sharply with pain. Yet as he saw that golden head upon his shoulder, the
words and tune of 'Two little girls in blue' throbbed on the air, and
with an aching