“Ethel,” the boy repeated, impatiently, “why are you not listening?  Do you realise that I must leave you in half an hour?”

She looked at him with deep tenderness.  Something like a tear lent a soft radiance to her large child-like eyes.

Ernest saw it and was profoundly moved.  In that moment he loved her passionately.

“Foolish boy,” she said softly; then, lowering her voice to a whisper:  “You may kiss me before you go.”

His lips gently touched hers, but she took his head between her hands and pressed her mouth upon his in a long kiss.

Ernest drew back a little awkwardly.  He had not been kissed like this before.

“Poet though you are,” Ethel whispered, “you have not yet learned to kiss.”

She was deeply agitated when she noticed that his hand was fumbling for the watch in his vest-pocket.  She suddenly released him, and said, a little hurt:  “No, you must not miss your train.  Go by all means.”

Vainly Ernest remonstrated with her.

“Go to him,” she said, and again, “go to him.”

With a heavy heart the boy obeyed.  He waved his hat to her once more from below, and then rapidly disappeared in the crowd.  For a moment strange misgivings cramped her heart, and something within her called out to him:  “Do not go!  Do not return to that house.”  But no sound issued from her lips.  Worldly wisdom had sealed them, had stifled the inner voice.  And soon the boy’s golden head was swallowed up in the distance.

XVI

While the train sped to New York, Ethel Brandenbourg was the one object engaging Ernest’s mind.  He still felt the pressure of her lips upon his, and his nostrils dilated at the thought of the fragrance of her hair brushing against his forehead.

But the moment his foot touched the ferry-boat that was to take him to Manhattan, the past three weeks were, for the time being at least, completely obliterated from his memory.  All his other interests that he had suppressed in her company because she had no part in them, came rushing back to him.  He anticipated with delight his meeting with Reginald Clarke.  The personal attractiveness of the man had never seemed so powerful to Ernest as when he had not heard from him for some time.  Reginald’s letters were always brief.  “Professional writers,” he was wont to say, “cannot afford to put fine feeling into their private correspondence.  They must turn it into copy.”  He longed to sit with the master in the studio when the last rays of the daylight were tremulously falling through the stained window, and to discuss far into the darkening night philosophies young and old.  He longed for Reginald’s voice, his little mannerisms, the very perfume of his rooms.

There also was a deluge of letters likely to await him in his apartment.  For in his hurried departure he had purposely left his friends in the dark as to his whereabouts.  Only to Jack he had dropped a little note the day after his meeting with Ethel.