“I say, kiss me,” he whispered, with a strange new excitement crimsoning his cheeks and rattling his heart so loudly that he wondered if Dora noticed anything. “Shan’t!” murmured Dora. “Do.” “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said, wriggling herself free. “You have got a cheek. Fancy kissing anyone.” “Dora, I’m frightfully gone on you,” affirmed Michael, choking with the emotional declaration. “Are you gone on me?” “I like you all right,” Dora confessed. “Well then, do kiss me. You might. Oh, I say, do.” He leaned over and sought those unresponsive lips that, mutely cold, met his. He spent a long time trying to persuade her to give way, but Dora protested she could not understand why people kissed at all, so silly as it was. “But it’s not,” Michael protested. “Or else everybody wouldn’t want to do it.” However, it was useless to argue with Dora. She was willing to put her curly golden head on his shoulder, until he nearly exploded with sentiment; she seemed not to mind how often he pressed his lips to hers; but all the time she was passive, inert, drearily unresponsive. The deeper she seemed to shrink within herself and the colder she stayed, the more Michael felt inclined to hurt her, to shake her roughly, almost to draw blood from those soft lifeless lips. Once she murmured to him that he was hurting her, and Michael was in a quandary between an overwhelming softness of pity and an exultant desire to make her cry out sharply with pain. Yet as he saw that golden head upon his shoulder, the words and tune of ‘Two little girls in blue’ throbbed on the air, and with an aching fondness Michael felt his eyes fill with tears. Such love as his for Dora could never be expressed with the eloquence and passion it demanded. Michael and Alan had tacitly agreed to postpone all discussion of their passionate adventure until the blackness of night and secret intimacy of their bedroom made the discussion of it possible. “I say, I kissed Dora this morning,” announced Michael. “So did I Winnie,” said Alan. “She wouldn’t kiss me, though,” said Michael. “Wouldn’t she?” Alan echoed in surprize, “Winnie kissed me.” “She didn’t!” exclaimed Michael. “She did, I swear she did. She kissed me more than I kissed her. I felt an awful fool. I nearly got up and walked away. Only I didn’t like to.” “Good Lord,” apostrophized Michael. He was staggered by Alan’s success and marvelled that Alan, who was admittedly less clever than himself, should conquer when he had failed. He could not understand the reason; but he supposed that Dora, being so obviously the prettier, was deservedly the more difficult to win. However, Michael felt disinclined to pursue the subject, because it was plain that Alan took no credit to himself for his success, and he wished still to be the leader in their friendship. He did not want Alan to feel superior in anything.