not?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t kiss people any more.”
“But—me?” he demanded incredulously.
“I’ve kissed too many people. I’ll have nothing left if I keep on kissing people.”
“But you’ll kiss me, Noel?”
“Why?”
He could not even say, “Because I love you.” But he could say it, he knew that he could say it, when she was in his arms.
“If I kiss you once, will you go home?”
“Why, do you want me to go home?”
“I’m tired. I was travelling last night and I can never sleep on a train. Can you? I can never——”
Her tendency to leave the subject willingly made him frantic.
“Then kiss me once,” he insisted.
“You promise?”
“You kiss me first.”
“No, Juan, you promise first.”
“Don’t you want to kiss me?”
“Oh-h-h!” she groaned.
With gathering anxiety Juan promised and took her in his arms. For one moment at the touch of her lips, the feeling of her, of Noel, close to him, he forgot the evening, forgot himself—rather became the inspired, romantic self that she had known. But it was too late. Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him away.
“You promised.”
“Noel——”
She got up. Confused and unsatisfied, he followed her to the door.
“Noel——”
“Good night, Juan.”
As they stood on the doorstep her eyes rose over the line of dark trees towards the ripe harvest moon. Some glowing thing would happen to her soon, she thought, her mind far away. Something that would dominate her, snatch her up out of life, helpless, ecstatic, exalted.
“Good night, Noel. Noel, please——”
“Good night, Juan. Remember we’re going swimming tomorrow. It’s wonderful to see you again. Good night.”
She dosed the door.
III.
Towards morning he awoke from a broken sleep, wondering if she had not kissed him because of the three spots on his cheek. He turned on the light and looked at them. Two were almost invisible. He went into the bathroom, doused all three with the black ointment and crept back into bed.
Cousin Cora greeted him stiffly at breakfast next morning.
“You kept your great-uncle awake last night,” she said. “He heard you moving around in your room.”
“I only moved twice,” he said unhappily. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“He has to have his sleep, you know. We all have to be more considerate when there’s someone sick. Young people don’t always think of that. And he was so unusually well when you came.”
It was Sunday, and they were to go swimming at Holly Morgan’s house, where a crowd always collected on the bright easy beach. Noel called for him, but they arrived before any of his half-humble remarks about the night before had managed to attract her attention. He spoke to those he knew and was introduced to others, made ill at ease again by their cheerful familiarity with one another, by the correct informality of their clothes. He was sure they noticed that he had worn only one suit during his visit to Culpepper Bay, varying it with white flannel trousers. Both pairs of trousers were out of press now, and after keeping his great-uncle awake he had not felt like bothering Cousin Cora about it at breakfast.
Again he tried to talk to Holly, with the vague idea of making Noel jealous, but Holly was busy and she eluded him. It was ten minutes before he extricated himself from a conversation with the obnoxious Miss Holyoke. At the moment he managed this he perceived to his horror that Noel was gone.
When he last saw her she had been engaged in a light but somehow intent conversation with the tall well-dressed stranger she had met yesterday. Now she wasn’t in sight. Miserable and horribly alone, he strolled up and down the beach, trying to look as if he were having a good time, seeming to watch the bathers, but keeping a sharp eye out for Noel. He felt that his self-conscious perambulations were attracting unbearable attention and sat down unhappily on a sand dune beside Billy Harper. But Billy Harper was neither cordial nor communicative, and after a minute hailed a man across the beach and went to talk to him.
Juan was desperate. When, suddenly, he spied Noel coming down from the house with the tall man, he stood up with a jerk, convinced that his features were working wildly.
She waved at him.
“A buckle came off my shoe,” she called. “I went to have it put on. I thought you’d gone in swimming.”
He stood perfectly still, not trusting his voice to answer. He understood that she was through with him; there was someone else. Immediately he wanted above all things to be away. As they came nearer, the tall man glanced at him negligently and resumed his vivacious, intimate conversation with Noel. A group suddenly closed around them.
Keeping the group in the corner of his eye, Juan began to move carefully and steadily towards the gate that led to the road. He started when the casual voice of a man behind him said, “Going?” and he answered, “Got to” with what purported to be a reluctant nod. Once behind the shelter of the parked cars, he began to run, slowed down as several chauffeurs looked at him curiously. It was a mile and a half to the Chandler house and the day was broiling, but he walked fast lest Noel, leaving the party—“With that man,” he thought bitterly—should overtake him trudging along the road. That would be more than he could bear.
There was the sound of a car behind him. Immediately Juan left the road and sought concealment behind a convenient hedge. It was no one from the party, but thereafter he kept an eye out for available cover, walking fast, or even running, over unpromising open spaces.
He was within sight of his cousin’s house when it happened. Hot and dishevelled, he had scarcely flattened himself against the back of a tree when Noel’s roadster, with the tall man at the wheel, flashed by down the road. Juan stepped out and looked after them. Then, blind with sweat and misery, he continued on towards home.
IV.
At luncheon, Cousin Cora looked at him closely.
“What’s the trouble?” she inquired. “Did something go wrong at the beach this morning?”
“Why, no,” he exclaimed in simulated astonishment. “What made you think that?”
“You have such a funny look. I thought perhaps
