“Thank you,” said my cousin, and moved a little away from me.
She began to talk about friendship, and lost her thread and forgot the little electric stress between us in a rather meandering analysis of her principal girl friends.
But afterwards she resumed her purpose.
I went to bed that night with one proposition overshadowing everything else in my mind, namely, that kissing my cousin Sybil was a difficult, but not impossible, achievement. I do not recall any shadow of a doubt whether on the whole it was worth doing. The thing had come into my existence, disturbing and interrupting its flow exactly as a fever does. Sybil had infected me with herself.
The next day matters came to a crisis in the little upstairs sitting-room which had been assigned me as a study during my visit. I was w
