Oh, my
gawd! Poor devil!"

Thus had the battalion stretcher-bearers found him the day before. . . .

The man became irritable.

"Go away at once! Can't you see I'm with a lady. Molly, dear, where
are you? What is this dirty-looking fellow doing here at all?"

But Molly for the moment seemed aloof. He saw her there, standing in
the path in front of him--so close and yet somehow so curiously far
away.

"Molly, do you hear that noise--that strange beating in the air? I
think I'm going to be ill. Perhaps two close together are too much."

But no--apparently not. Suddenly everything was clear again, and there
was Molly with the autumn wind blowing the soft tendrils of hair back
from the nape of her neck; Molly, with the skirt that betokens the
half-way period between flapperhood and coming out; Molly, with her
lithe young figure half turned from him as she watched the sun sinking
over the distant hills.

"They adore being kissed." The words of the wonderful Johnson major
were ringing in his brain as he watched her, and suddenly something
surged up within him. What matter rules and theories? What matter
practice? There is only one way to kiss a girl, and rules and theories
avail not one jot. With a quick step he had her in his arms, and, with
his pulses hammering with the wonder of it, he watched her face come
round to his. He kissed her cheek, her eyes, her mouth--shyly at
first, and then with gathering confidence as a boy should kiss a girl.

The sweetness of it, the newness of it, the eternal joy of a woman in a
man's arms for the first time! Surely it had never been quite like
that with any one else before. Of course, other people kissed,
but--this was different. Suddenly the girl disengaged her arms and
wound them gently round his neck. She pulled his head towards her, and
kissed him again and again, while he felt her heart beating against his
coat.

"Billy, my dear!"

Almost he missed the whispered words coming faintly from somewhere in
the neighbourhood of his tie.

"Molly--Molly, darling--I love you!"

The boy's voice was shaky, his grip almost crushed her.

"Do you, Billy? I'm so glad! I want you to love me,
because--because----"

She looked at him shyly.

"Say it, sweetheart, say it." He held her at arm's-length--no longer
bashful, no longer wondering whether he dared; but insistent,
imperious, a young god for the moment. "Because what?"

"Because I love you too, you dar