"Don't _you_ feel like that?" she asked artfully. Her reward, another choking hug, was immediately forthcoming. "You _are_ strong," Sally went on, and with a sense of daring and ownership and pride felt his arm for muscle. "I'm strong. In a way. Not massive, or anything of that kind. I can stand a lot. Mustn't think I'm weak because I'm small; but.... Well, you know what I mean." "Strong, but got no strength," suggested Toby. Sally shook him, chuckling proudly at his wit and will to tease. It was like shaking a tree, so immovable was he by the exerted strength of her weak arms. "Saucy!" she said. "Though I s'pose it's what I meant. Toby, you do like ... you know ... _this_?" she suddenly asked, not bent upon a caress, but in a sudden doubt. Her arms were warmly about his neck as she spoke. Toby left her no doubt. He was not talkative; he had no ready flow of compliment; but he could speak the language which a young girl in love best understands. He could crush her almost to ecstatic forgetfulness in his vigorous arms. Thus embraced, Sally was in Paradise, and her one desire was to remain there, in a sort of annulment of every other interest; but even in Paradise she found her thoughts irrepressible. So she chattered on, while Toby grunted or did not say anything, or occasionally grew marvellously glib and told something about his work, or an anecdote about himself which she sometimes thought he must have read somewhere. And ever and anon they were lost in silence, and their closeness to one another, and their long breathless kisses, which made Sally lean her forehead against Toby's breast and enjoy exquisitely the sense of being weaker than he and of surrendering all her will to his.