remark. I suppose he had very early developed this habit of irony as a protection and as a method of being scornful with seeming innocence. He never got rid of it. * * * * * But for a time he was very happy. At home there was a kind of truce—ominous had he only known—and he was left much to himself. Priscilla awoke and satisfied the need for contact with the feminine, fed the awakening sensuality. Then, when Priscilla somehow drifted away, there was another, much slighter, more commonplace affair with a girl named Maisie. She was a slightly coarse, dark type, a little older than George and much more developed. They used to meet after dark in the steep lanes of Martin’s Point, and kiss each other. George was a little scared by the way she gobbled his mouth and pressed herself against him; and then felt self-reproachful, thinking of Priscilla and her delicate, English-garden fragrance. One night, Maisie drew them along a different walk to a deserted part of the down, where a clump of thick pines made a close shadow over coarse grass. They had to climb up a steep hillside. “Oh, I’m tired,” said Maisie, “let’s sit down.” She lay down on the grass, and George lay beside her. He leaned over her and felt the low warm mounds of her breasts through his thin summer shirt. “The touch of your mouth is beautiful,” said George. “Honey and milk is under her tongue.” He put the tip of his tongue between her moist lips, and she touched it with hers. ************* ** *** ****** * *** ** ** *** *** **** ** *** *** ** *** ****. ***** *** ****** *** *****, ******* * **** ** ****** ****. George stupidly wondered why, and kissed her more tenderly and sensually. “Your lips,” he murmured, “your lips.” “But there must be something else,” she whispered back. “I want something from you.” “What more can I give you? What could be more beautiful than your kisses?” She lay passive and let him kiss her for a few minutes, and then sat up abruptly. “I must go home.” “Oh, but why? We were so happy here, and it’s still early.” “Yes, but I promised mother I’d be home early to-night.” George walked back to the door of Maisie’s house, and wondered why her good-night kiss was so untender, so perfunctory. A few nights later George went out—on the pretext of “mothing”—in the hope of finding Maisie. As he came silently round a corner, he saw about thirty yards ahead, in the dusk, Maisie walking away from him with a young man of about twenty. His arm was round her waist, and her head was resting on his shoulder as she used to rest it on George’s. It is to be hoped that she got her “something else” from the young man. George turned, and strolled home, looking up at the soft gentle stars, and thinking hard. “Something else? Something else?” It was his first intimation that women always want something else—and men too, men too. * * * * *