“Last year,” the ragged parrot-voice croaked out, “I made up my mind to be like other girls. I didn’t see why I wasn’t popular in the way they were—with men, I mean. I wanted so much to be. My roommate—and she’s my best friend, too—said it was because I was prudish. You can’t be _prudish_ if you want invitations to fraternity dances and things. Patty told me how she worked it. She said she’d begun herself by not being very keen on necking, but it grew on you. So she got a few dates for me through her dates, and I went ahead, trying her plan out. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t pretend well enough. And then, of course, the dates didn’t repeat. I didn’t much mind, for if popularity came that way it wasn’t worth the price, I’d learned, you see. So I went in for Drama instead, and compensated by trying to make my dent acting. And I got quite happy again. Patty and I sort of drifted apart. But giving up the ambition to be popular was like coming out of prison and I could bear even losing Patty. “Then all of a sudden, Ariel, the whole works went bang.... Because I met Prescott. And I had to laugh. For how can you really let a man kiss you so it counts, until you’re really and truly crazy for him to kiss you? I ask you?” This last was no mere slang phrase. Anne was seriously asking Ariel. And Ariel replied sharply, “You can’t, of course. That’s the whole secret; anybody knows.” Anne laughed, if one could call it laughter. It was neither sob nor speech, at any rate. And went on. “There’s something tremendous about wanting to be kissed like that. You don’t know whether it’s pain or bliss. It’s both, I guess, full up to the brim of your heart, really.... When he touched my hand, even by accident, it was like the world coming to an end. I thought I’d die of it. And it seemed to be like that with him too. “Patty said I was coming along,—for I’d won back her respect again, attracting a man like Prescott. She warned me to be careful, though. But there has never been any danger. It was Prescott who was careful. So far as I was concerned he could have had anything he wanted of me. Why not? After kisses like that? “But it didn’t affect _him_ that way I guess. Just his loving me as much as he did was bliss. And I didn’t want him to want to marry me, after he explained to me his point of view on marriage and I had read ‘Stephen’s Fall,’ and all. It wouldn’t have been Prescott, you see, married stodgily to a nice girl! I was glad he was just himself and I was _proud_ that he could tell me frankly just how much he didn’t care for me as well as how much he did, if you know what I mean.” “Yes,” Ariel agreed. “I do know. Loving a person doesn’t mean wanting to change them, even if changing them would only mean their being able to love you better. You love them because they are the way they are....”