id, "now one can just see one can snub
you with just the tiniest frown--make you look sheepish by just moving
a little away from you" ... she laughed, tantalizingly, roguishly, with
tightly-closed eyes, as if she could not stand being looked at, either.

"Well, upon my soul!" I blurted out, "now you shall just see," and I
flung my arms violently around her shoulders. I was mortified. Was the
girl out of her senses? Did she think I was totally inexperienced! Ha!
Then I would, by the living.... No one should say of me that I was
backward on that score. The creature was possessed by the devil
himself! If it were only a matter of going at it, well....

She sat quite quietly, and still kept her eyes closed; neither of us
spoke. I crushed her fiercely to me, pressed her body greedily against
my breast, and she spoke never a word. I heard her heart's beat, both
hers and mine; they sounded like hurrying hoofbeats.

I kissed her.

I no longer knew myself. I uttered some nonsense, that she laughed at,
whispered pet names into her mouth, caressed her cheek, kissed her many
times....

She winds her arms about my neck, quite slowly, tenderly, the breath of
her pink quivering nostrils fans me right in the face; she strokes down
my shoulders with her left hand, and says, "What a lot of loose hair
there is."

"Yes," I reply.

"What can be the reason that your hair falls out so?"

"Don't know."

"Ah, of course, because you drink too much, and perhaps ... fie, I
won't say it. You ought to be ashamed. No, I wouldn't have believed
that of you! To think that you, who are so young, already should lose
your hair! Now, do please just tell me what sort of way you really
spend your life--I am certain it is dreadful! But only the truth, do
you hear; no evasions. Anyway, I shall see by you if you hide
anything--there, tell now!"

"Yes; but let me kiss you first, then."

"Are you mad?... Humph, ... I want to hear what kind of a man you
are.... Ah, I am sure it is dreadful."

It hurt me that she should believe the worst of me; I was afraid of
thrusting her away entirely, and I could not endure the misgivings she
had as to my way of life. I would clear myself in her eyes, make myself
worthy of her, show her that she was sitting at the side of a person
almost angelically disposed. Why, bless me, I could count my falls up
to date on my fingers. I related--related all--and I only related
truth. I made out nothing any worse than it was; i