Feeling deliciously extravagant, he bought her a three pound box of bon bons adorned with large red roses, and they made their way through the crisp cold to Maxine's home on the hill where the girl discovered with joy that her parents were not yet home from their evening of bridge in Janesville, wherefore Peter must come in for a cup of hot cocoa. Unbelievable delight! To be invited into her house. To be near her, allowed to touch her, and perhaps even to kiss her if he chose. The very air seemed different in the house where his love ate and slept and bathed and dressed. He was sure that never before had he seen anything so exquisite as the sofa pillows she had made out of cigarette flags, or the pictures she had burned on wood. She had a little alcove off the sitting room which was all her own hung with school pennants and drawings of the Charles Dana Gibson variety. She had a cupboard full of bon bon boxes, dance programs, comic postcards inscribed with "Oh, You Girl!" and a whole album of snapshots. Peter was awed. He had never before seen an alcohol burner nor a chafing dish. He watched the glowing girl as she prepared cocoa and Welsh rarebit, was delighted with every movement she made and every word she spoke. "I got a raise," Peter said. "I'm a draftsman's assistant now. Mike O'Casey says he might build one of my camp trailers when I get it designed." "Gee, could I meet Mr. O'Casey sometime?" Maxine asked. "Well, gosh, Maxine. I dunno. That's pretty hard to arrange." "Oh, all right, smarty. You think he's too good for a little girl like me." "But, darling...." He could have bitten his tongue for having said a thing like that. Calling her "darling"! Who did he think he was? She stood perfectly still, waiting. "You're an awful pretty girl," he said at last. He watched her as she turned to the chafing dish again. Her movements were deft and very feminine. "I ... I wish you would let me kiss you like you said that night." "Why not?" said Maxine. She turned up her face for the first kiss Peter had given a girl in his life. To Peter the world was non-existent for that moment. Maxine broke away to keep the cocoa from boiling over. Afterwards she turned out the lights and they sat on the sofa looking out into the starlight. They could see across the creek and across mysterious miles of frozen brown marshland beyond the town to where lights twinkled in distant farmhouses. She put his hand down the neck of her dress and he was surprised and almost frightened by the soft delicacy of her breasts. "Well," said Maxine from the depths of her pillows. "Are you just going to sit there all night?" She put her arms around him and kissed him again and again. She drew him down toward her and he found himself strangely wishing to be free. "No, no, Maxine," he said humbly. "I couldn't. Why, Maxine, you're just an angel to me. I never even thought of you like that." 3