year younger."

"May I kiss you?" I asked, stumblingly.

"Yes, Johnnie, you may kiss me"....

"Why, you dear child, you ... you kiss just like a small boy ..." in a
lower voice, "can it be possible that you, with all your tramping, your
knowledge of life in books, of people?--"

I bent my head, ashamed, silently acknowledging my inexperience of
women.

"No, it's nothing to be ashamed of, dearest boy ... I think you are a
fine man--to have gone through what you have--and still--"

Her voice trailed off. She put her arm around my neck, drew me to her,
and kissed me!

* * * * *

As we sat close together, a brooding silence. Then, with a transition of
thought to the practical, she remarked....

"I'm angry with these people ... they over-charge for everything."

"Just think of it--I--I feel I may speak of it to you ... we seem to
have come so near to each other to-night--"

"They brought my laundry back yesterday, and for one piece of silk
lingerie I was charged--guess?"

I couldn't imagine how much.

"Seventy-five cents--think of that!"

* * * * *

As the Eoites came tramping back from the lecture, they found us still
seated there. At the first footstep we had swiftly moved apart.

I had been half-reclining, my head in her lap, strangely soothed and
happy as she ran her fingers through my hair. For a long time neither of
us had said a word.

Now I sat apart from her, awkward and wooden.

Spalton did not speak, inclined his head icily, as he strode by.

"He's mad because I didn't come to his talk," she whispered.

"I see my finish," I replied.

* * * * *

Now, Spalton was as much in love with Dorothy, his second wife, as I
have ever known a man to be in love with a woman. But that could not
entirely exclude his jealousy over my sympathetic relation with the
"Southern Lady," as the artworkers termed her. And he feared for her on
another score. She was, to use a constantly recurring phrase of the
Master's, whenever he wished to describe anyone as being wealthy, "lousy
with money," and he suspected, not without good cause, that I would warn
her against paying exorbitant prices for books and objects of art....

* * * * *

One night I was the cause of an accident which gave him a handle to
seize on.

We were having a musicale. A new musician had come to Eos. The former
Eos mu