“Of course I shall, you silly! I shall always remember you--you’ve been awfully sweet to me.” “Will you write to me?” “We’ll see about that.” “Promise.” “Promises are like pie-crusts, made to be broken.” “Yours wouldn’t be. I bet anything if you promised a chap something, you’d stick to it. Now wouldn’t you?” “I daresay I should,” she murmured, flattered. “Mother says I’ve always been a terrible one for keeping to what I’ve once said. It’s the way I am, you know.” No fleeting suspicion crossed her mind that this was anything but a true description of herself. “Elsie, do you know what I should like to do?” “What, Mr. Roberts?” “Call me Norman. I should like to make a hell of a lot of money and come back and marry you.” “You shouldn’t use those words.” “I’m in earnest, Elsie.” “You’re making very free with my name, aren’t you?” “You don’t mind.” “No,” she whispered. “You’re a little darling.” The lights went out again, and his hand fumbled for hers in the darkness. Warm and unresisting it lay in his, and presently returned pressure for pressure. The story on the screen began to threaten tragedy, and Elsie’s body became tense with anxiety. She pressed her shoulder hard against that of Roberts. He, too, leant towards her, and presently slipped one arm round her waist. Instantly her senses were awake, and although she continued to gaze at the screen, she was in reality blissfully preoccupied only with his embrace, and the sensations it aroused in her. Intensely desirous that he should not move away, she relaxed her figure more and more, letting her head rest at last against his shoulder. She began to wonder whether he would kiss her, and to feel that she wanted him to do so. As though she had communicated the thought to him, the man beside her in the obscurity put his disengaged hand under her chin and tilted her face to his. She did not resist, and he kissed her, first on her soft cheek and then on her mouth. Elsie had been kissed before, roughly and teasingly by boys, and once or twice, furtively, by an elderly lodger of Mrs. Palmer’s, whose breath had smelt of whisky. But the kisses of this young commercial traveller were of an entirely different quality to these, and the pleasure that she took in them was new and startling to herself. “Elsie, d’you love me?” he whispered. “I love you. I think you’re the sweetest little girl in the whole world.” Elsie liked the words vaguely, but she did not really want him to talk, she wanted him to go on kissing her. “Say--‘I love you, Norman.’” “I won’t.” “You must. Why won’t you?” “It’s so soppy.” “Elsie!” She felt that the magnetic current between them had been disturbed, and made an instinctive, nestling movement against him. He kissed her again, two or three times.