Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he bent to touch her forehead with his lips, and she lifted her face at the same moment. His kiss fell on her mouth, and she responded. At the same instant her girlhood ended forever--vanished on her lips in a little sigh. Dazed, silenced, a trifle faint, she turned from him blindly. "Please," she whispered, in the ghost of a voice; and he released her. For a few moments she stood resting against the fir-tree, her left arm across her eyes, frightened, motionless. The forest was very still around her, as though every leaf were listening. CHAPTER XVII HER FIRST CAMPAIGN "Karen," she heard him say, in a constrained and unfamiliar voice, "I love you." If he thought he was still speaking to the same girl whose soft and fragrant lips he had touched a moment before, he was mistaken. He spoke too late. The girl had vanished with her girlhood. And now it was with a very different sort of being he had to do--with a woman whose mind had quickened under shock; whose latent emotions had been made conscious; whose spirit, awakened by a crisis, was already armoured and in arms. Aroused, alert, every instinct awake, proud of a new and radiant knowledge, new motives germinated, new impulses possessed her; a new and delicious wisdom thrilled her. She was ready, and she realized it. "Karen?" She heard him perfectly. Deep within her something was laughing. There was no hurry. She knew it. "Karen?" he said, very humbly. Conscious of the change within herself, still a little surprised and excited by it, and by a vaguely exquisite sensation of impending adventure, of perils charmingly indefinite, of the newness of it all, deep, deep within her she felt the certainty, the tranquillity, the sweet intoxication of power. Power! She knew she was using it now. She knew she was exercising it on this man. And, for a second, the grasp of the new weapon almost frightened her. For it was her first campaign. And she had not yet reconnoitered the adversary or fully developed his strength and position. Man, as an adversary, was still unknown to her. "Karen?" he ventured, rather anxiously. Instantly she lost a large portion of her fear of him. Oh! but she had a long, long reckoning to settle yet with him. She cast a swift glance backward, but already her girlhood was gone--gone with its simplicity, its quaint perplexities, its dear ignorance, its pathos, its helplessness before experience, its naïveté, its faith. It had gone, slipped away, exhaled in a deep, unconscious sigh. And suddenly she flushed hotly, remembering his lips. Truly, truly there was a long reckoning still to come.... But there seemed to be no hurry. Still leaning against the tree, she fumbled for her handkerchief, touched her eyes with it leisurely, then, still turning her back to him, she lifted her hands to her hair. For a first campaign she was doing very well.