caught a gleam in her eye and a curve of her lip I thought vulgar.  But perhaps the next night I met her she would be as bright as ever.

“I introduced her to my friends, who knew our relations, for I blabbed everything.  But she did not mind their knowing and if we met would give them all a kiss, so that I felt I had been rather too profuse in my hospitality, though I still would say:  ’Have another one, Bert; I don’t mind.’  But whatever ass I made of myself she forgave me anything, and was fonder of me every time we met, while I, although I did not know it for a long time, was less fond of her.  She knew how to revive my love, however.  Some nights she would not meet me, and I would be like a madman.  Other nights she would meet me, but not let me raise her dress.  She would lie on me, on a moonlit night, and her young face in shadow like a siren’s in its frame of hair, merely to kiss me.  But what kisses!  Slow, cold kisses changing to clinging, passionate ones.  She would leave my mouth to look around, as if frightened, and come back, open-mouthed, with a side-contact of lips that brought out unexpected felicities.

“One night her fiance saw us together, and followed me after I left her, but on turning a corner I ran.  I ridiculed him to her and despised him.  I should have found it difficult to say why.  Another night her brother attacked me, and it would have gone hard with me, but Annie pulled me in and banged the door.  We were in a friend’s house, but her father came around soon and laid a stick about her shoulders, in my presence.  I tried to talk big, and said something idiotic about being as good a man as her betrothed, as though my intentions were honorable, which for one brief moment made Anne look at me, paler faced and changed, such a strange glance.  But he beat her home, enjoying my rage, and she went away, crying in her hands.  I was allowed to go unmolested.

“I soon received a letter from her asking me not to mind and making an appointment, at which she turned up cheerful and unconcerned.  She went to confession, and would meet me afterwards; and her faith in that, and the difference of our religions (if I had any religion) would make her seem strange and alien to me at times, even banal.  At last our meetings became a mere habit of sensuality, with all charm, and suggestion of better things eliminated....

“I went with my friend George (who shared my room) one afternoon and called at Annie’s school; she kept an infants’ school of her own.  She came to the door herself.  It was the first time I had seen her in daylight, and I thought her cheek-bones bigger; she certainly was not so pretty as on the first evening I met her.  George had told me he would sleep away if I wanted the room, and when next I met her she promised to come and sleep with me.  Before I had always met her on the grass, under trees.  She came, and the sight of her young limbs and breasts revived