Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/161

Rh of his shoulder, he would lean forward and whis¬ per: “Kiss me, Janet. Kiss me.” Obediently she would turn her face upward, her little mouth pursed into a coral bud, but if he held her too tightly or prolonged the kiss, she pushed him away or turned her face. Then he felt repelled, chilled. She kissed him much as she kissed her mother every night, and he wanted—well, he did n’t quite know what he did want except that he did n’t want to be kissed that way. Finally he protested. “What’s the matter, Janet?” he asked gently. “Don’t you love me?” “Of course,” she answered calmly in her small flute-like voice; “of course I love you, but you are so rough. You mustn’t kiss me hard like that; it is n’t nice.” Nice! Hugh felt as if she had slapped his face. Then he knew that she did n’t understand at all. He tried to excuse her by telling himself that she was just a child—she was within a year of his own age—and that she would love him the way he did her when she grew older; but down in his heart he sensed the fact that she was n’t capable of love that she merely wanted to be petted and caresse as a child did. The shadows and the moonlight did not move her as they did him, and she thought that he was silly when he said that he could hear a song in the night breeze. She had said that his poem was very pretty. That was all. Well,