one out of her voice.

"Well ... kisses should be for one lover; not for two."

She pondered, and turned to him with an air of triumph. "But you see,
these are new kisses for Leander. They are entirely different. They've
never been given before. They've got nothing to do with the others."

He pretended to be convinced. But the kisses she gave to Leander were less
rapturous. She was thinking.

"I'm afraid you don't think so highly of ... Leander," he suggested.
"Suppose I be ... Samson?"

She leaned her head on his shoulder as if she had grown tired.

"Samson was a very strong man," he explained. "He could push a house
down."

That interested her.

"Would you like to be Samson?" she asked.

"I think it might be nice ... but no--the woman who kissed Samson betrayed
him. I think I won't be Samson, after all."

She had been nervously fingering the necklace of gold beads at her throat;
and suddenly she uttered a distressed cry. The string had broken, and the
beads fell in a yellow shower to the rug.

She climbed down on her knees beside him and picked up the beads, one by
one.

"Let them go," he urged cheerfully, noting her distress. "Come back. I'll
be anybody you choose. Even Samson."

That extinguished light seemed to have been turned on again. She looked up
at him smiling. "No, I don't want you to be Samson," she said. "And I
don't want to lose my beads."

He regarded her happily. She looked very little and soft there on the rug.
"You look like a kitten," he declared.

She picked up the last bead and looked at the unstable baubles in her pink
left palm. She tilted her hand so that they rolled back and forth. "Could
a kitten look at a king?" she asked with mock earnestness.

"I should think it could, if there happened to be any king about."

She continued to make the beads roll about on her hand. "I'm going to be a
kitten," she declared with decision. "Would you like me to be a kitten?"
She raised herself on her knees and propped her right hand behind her on
the rug for support. She was looking earnestly into his eyes.

"If you'd like to be," he replied.

"Hold your hand," she commanded. She poured the beads into his immense,
hard palm. "Don't spill them." She turned about on the rug on hands and
knees, and crept away to the middle of the floor. She turned and arose to
her knees, and rested both hands before her on the floor. She held her
head high and _meowed_ twice so realistically that Harboro le