“You’re hurting me now, Jerry—­terribly.”

“I can’t see—­”

“That you can’t see any difference, between my being here—­and Una’s.”

His voice fell a little.

“Of course, there’s a difference.  Una is a friend and you—­why Marcia—­” and he came near her, “of course there’s all the difference in the world in that way.  You’re the girl I—­I love.”

“Jerry!” she whispered.

I was miserable.  It was nauseating.  Fate was surely unkind to me.

“But I want to be just,” he went on clearly.  “And I want you to be just.  I surely couldn’t harm Una any more than I could you.”

“Oh, Jerry; I’m sure you kissed her.”

“No.  Why should I?”

“Because, I thought she might have asked you to.”

“She didn’t.  I suppose it hadn’t occurred to her.  I’m not much at kissing, Marcia.  It’s rather meaningless if you don’t love a person, isn’t it?  Kissing ought to be a kind of sacrament.  It’s a symbol.  It must mean something.  At least that’s the way it seems to me.  The girl one loves, Marcia, you—­”

He was very close to her now and I think his arms encircled her, for I heard her whisper “Kiss me, Jerry!  Kiss me!”

I must have deserved this punishment.  Aside from the unhappy nature of my feelings, I was suffering severe bodily discomfort from some small object, a stone, I think, pressed against my ribs.  I moved slightly and there was a resounding crackle of broken twigs.  The silken foot beside me started suddenly.

“What was that?” whispered the girl.

“Oh,” said Jerry, “merely a squirrel or—­or a chipmunk.”  And then more convincingly, “Yes, I think it was a chipmunk.”

I held my breath in an agony of apprehension, expecting each second to be hauled out of my retreat by Jerry’s muscular hand on my collar, and it was therefore with a feeling of manifest relief that I heard their conversation resumed.

“I’m so glad you think a kiss is a sacrament,” she murmured.  “It should be—­shouldn’t it?—­a pledge,” and then, “But that was such a light one, Jerry—­”

He kissed her again.  There was a long silence—­long.  She had won.

“Oh, Jerry,” she sighed at last, “it is so sweet.  You have never kissed me like that before.  Why, what is the matter?”

Jerry, it seemed, had risen suddenly.  “I—­I mustn’t, Marcia.  I mustn’t.  It is sweet—­but—­but terrible.  I can’t tell you—­”

“Terrible, Jerry?”

“Yes, I can’t explain.  It’s a kind of profanation—­your sanctity.  I don’t know.  It makes me deliriously happy and—­horribly miserable.”

“But I am yours, Jerry, yours, do you understand?  And if I like you to kiss me—­”

“I mustn’t, Marcia, not here.”

He was very much disturbed.  “Marcia!” he said in a suppressed tone as he came quickly to her again.  “Was that what you meant—­was that why you asked me if I’d kissed Una?”