hat kiss for which I hungered and
thirsted. Cousin Sybil went about in the happy persuasion that I was
madly in love with her, and her game, so far as she was concerned,
was played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for two days that
I realised that I was being used for the commonest form of excitement
possible to a commonplace girl; that dozens perhaps of young men had
played the part of Tantalus at cousin Sybil's lips. I walked about my
room at nights, damning her and calling her by terms which on the whole
she rather deserved, while Sybil went to sleep pitying "poor old Dick!"

"Damn it!" I said, "I WILL be equal with you."

But I never did equalise the disadvantage, and perhaps it's as well, for
I fancy that sort of revenge cuts both people too much for a rational
man to seek it....

"Why are men so silly?" said cousin Sybil next morning, wriggling back
with down-bent head to release herself from what should have been a
compelling embrace.

"Confound it!" I said with a flash of clear vision. "You STARTED this
game."

"Oh!"

She stood back against a hedge of roses, a little flushed and excited
and interested, and ready for the delightful defensive if I should renew
my attack.

"Beastly hot for scuffling," I said, white with anger. "I don't know
whether I'm so keen on kissing you, Sybil, after all. I just thought you
wanted me to."

I could have whipped her, and my voice stung more than my words.

Our eyes met; a real hatred in hers leaping up to meet mine.

"Let's play tennis," I said, after a moment's pause.

"No," she answered shortly, "I'm going indoors."

"Very well."

And that ended the affair with Sybil.

I was still in the full glare of this disillusionment when Gertrude
awoke from some preoccupation to an interest in my existence. She
developed a disposition to touch my hand by accident, and let her
fingers rest in contact with it for a moment,--she had pleasant soft
hands;--she began to drift into summer houses with me, to let her arm
rest trustfully against mine, to ask questions about Cambridge. They
were much the same questions that Sybil had asked. But I controlled
myself and maintained a profile of intelligent and entirely civil
indifference to her blandishments.

What Gertrude made of it came out one evening in some talk--I forget
about what--with Sybil.

"Oh, Dick!" said Gertrude a little impatiently, "Dick's Pi."

And I never disillusioned her by any subsequent levity from