"Perhaps--perhaps we could go up on the roof here for just a few minutes. Then I must send you home." "Hooray! Come on." He boldly lifted her to her feet, followed her up the stairs. On the last dark flight, near the roof, he threw both arms about her and kissed her. She was amazed that she did not want to kiss him back, that his abandon did not stir her. Even while she was shocked and afraid, he kissed again, and she gave way to his kiss; her cold mouth grew desirous. She broke away, with shocked pride--shocked most of all at herself, that she let him kiss her thus. "You quiver so to my kiss!" he whispered, in awe. "I don't!" she denied. "It just doesn't mean anything." "It does, and you know it does. I had to kiss you. Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, we are both so lonely! Kiss me." "No, no!" She held him away from her. "Yes, I tell you!" She encircled his neck with her arm, laid her cheek beside his chin, rejoiced boundlessly in the man roughness of his chin, of his coat-sleeve, the man scent of him--scent of tobacco and soap and hair. She opened her lips to his. Slowly she drew her arm from about his neck, his arm from about her waist. "Walter!" she mourned, "I did want you. But you must be good to me--not kiss me like that--not now, anyway, when I'm lonely for you and can't resist you.... Oh, it wasn't wrong, was it, when we needed each other so? It wasn't wrong, was it?" "Oh no--no!" "But not--not again--not for a long while. I want you to respect me. Maybe it wasn't wrong, dear, but it was terribly dangerous. Come, let's stand out in the cool air on the roof for a while and then you must go home." They came out on the flat, graveled roof, round which all the glory of the city was blazing, and hand in hand, in a confidence delicately happy now, stood worshiping the spring. "Dear," he said, "I feel as though I were a robber who had gone crashing right through the hedge around your soul, and then after that come out in a garden--the sweetest, coolest garden.... I _will_ try to be good to you--and for you." He kissed her finger-tips. "Yes, you did break through. At first it was just a kiss and the--oh, it was _the_ kiss, and there wasn't anything else. Oh, do let me live in the little garden still." "Trust me, dear." "I will trust you. Come. I must go down now." "Can I come to see you?" "Yes." "Goldie, listen," he said, as they came down-stairs to her hallway. "Any time you'd like to marry me--I don't advise it, I guess I'd have good intentions, but be a darn poor hand at putting up shelves--but any time you'd like to marry me, or any of those nice conventional things, just lemme know, will you? Not that it matters much. What matters is, I want to kiss you good-night." "No, what matters is, I'm not going to let you!... Not to-night.... Good-night, dear."