dreamed of doing
brave deeds for her, of saving her from terrible dangers. At first her
vague, fleeting kisses thrilled him, but as the weeks went by and his
passion grew, he found them strangely unsatisfying.

When she cuddled her lovely head in the hollow of his shoulder, he
would lean forward and whisper: "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
didn't quite know what he did want except that he didn'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 isn't nice."

Nice! Hugh felt as if she had slapped his face. Then he knew that she
didn'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 wasn't capable of love, that she
merely wanted to be petted and caressed 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, maybe
it wasn't a very good poem, but it had--well, it had--it had something
in it that wasn't just pretty.

He began to visit the lake less often and to wish that September and the
opening of college would arrive. When the day finally came to return, he
was almost as much excited as he had been the year before. Gosh! it
would be good to see Carl again. The bum had written only once. Yeah,
and Pudge Jamieson, too, and Larry Stillwell, and Bill Freeman,
and--yes, by golly! Merton Billings. He'd be glad to see old Fat
Billings. He wondered if Merton was as fat as ever and as pure. And all
the brothers at the Nu Delta house. He'd been too busy to get really
acquainted with them last year; but this year, by gosh, he'd get to know
all of them. It certainly would be great to be back and be a sophomore
and make the little frosh stand around.

He did