had not the least idea whether any other girl in the world ever felt as she did, and was inclined to believe herself unnatural and depraved.
This thought hardly ever depressed her. She thought that to remain technically " a good girl " was all that was required of her, and admitted no further responsibility.
Geraldine and she quarrelled incessantly. Geraldine. with her poor physique and constant indispositions, was angrily jealous of Elsie's superb health and uninterrupted preoccupation with her own affairs. She had only just begun to suspect that Elsie was never without a masculine admirer, and the knowledge, when it became a certainty, would embitter the relations between them still further on Geraldine's side.
On Elsie's side there was no bitterness, only contempt and unmalicious hostility. She disliked her elder sister, but was incapable of the mental effort implied by hatred. In the same way, she disliked her mother, almost without knowing that she did so.
Her home had always been ugly, sordid, and abounding in passionless discord. Elsie's real life, which was just beginning to give her the romance and excitement for which she craved, was lived entirely outside the walls of No. 15, Hillbourne Terrace.
To-night, as she entered the hot, dark, enervating atmosphere of the cinema theatre, she thrilled in response to the contrast with the street outside. When she heard the loud, emphasised rhythm of a waltz coming from the piano beneath the screen, little shivers of joy ran through her.
A girl with a tiny electric torch indicated to them a row of seats, and Elsie pushed her way along until the two empty places at the very end of the row were reached. It added the last drop to her cup of satisfaction that she should have only the wall on one side of her. Human proximity almost always roused her to a vague curiosity and consciousness, that would have interfered with her full enjoyment of the evening.
She settled herself in the soft, comfortable seat, slipping her arms from the sleeves of her coat, and leaning back against it, Roberts dropped a small box into her lap as he sat down beside her.
"Thanks awfully," she whispered.
A film was showing, and Elsie became absorbed at once in the presentment of it, although she had no idea of the story. It came to an end very soon, and a Topical Budget was shown. Elsie was less interested, and pulled the string off her box of chocolates.
"Have one?"
"I don't mind. Thanks."
"They're awfully good," She chewed and sucked bliss-fully,
"Ooh! Look at that ship! Isn't it funny?"
"Makes you feel seasick to look at it, doesn't it?" whispered Roberts, and she giggled ecstatically.
Words appeared on the screen.
Hearts and Crowns,' featuring Lallie Carmichael."
"How lovely!" said Elsie.
The story was complicated, and as most of the characters were Russian, Elsie did not always remember whether Sergius was the villain or the lawyer, and if Olga was the name of the " vampire " or of the soubrette. But the beautiful Lallie Carmichael was the heroine, and a clean-shaven American the hero. Elsie watched them almost breathlessly, and after a time it was she herself who was leaning back in the crowded restaurant, in a very low dress, and waving an ostrich-feather fan, torn between passion and loyalty. The American hero assumed no definite personality, other than that which his creator had endowed him. The scenes that she liked best were those between the two lovers, when they were shown alone together, and the American made passionate love to the princess.
At the end of the First Part, the lights went up.
Elsie turned her shining eyes and rumpled curls towards her escort.
"It is good, isn't it?" he said, with a critical air.
"Isn't it good? Have another sweet?"
"Well, thanks, I don't mind. Are you enjoying yourself, kiddie?"
"Awfully. I like pictures."
"What about me? Don't you like me a little bit too, Elsie, for bringing you?" His voice had become low and husky.
Still under the emotional influence of the story, the music, and the relaxation produced by bodily warmth and comfort, she looked at him, and saw, not the common, rather negligible features of sandy-haired Mr. Roberts, but the bold, handsome American hero of the film.
"Of course I like you," she said softly.
"You won't forget me when I've gone?"
"No."
"You will, Elsie! You'll let some other fellow take you to the pictures, and you won't give me another thought."
"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
