“You must. Why won’t you?”
“It’s so soppy.”
“Elsie!”
She felt that the magnetic current between them had been disturbed, and made an instinctive, nestling movement against him.
He kissed her again, two or three times.
Reluctantly, Elsie forced herself to the realisation that the film must soon come to an end, and the lights reappear. She looked at the screen again, and when the lovers, in magnified presentment, exchanged a long embrace, responsive vibrations shook her, and she felt all the elation of conscious and recent initiation.
The lights suddenly flashed out, a moment sooner than she expected them, and she flung herself across into her own seat, pressing the backs of her hands against her flushed, burning cheeks and dazzled eyes.
She knew that Norman Roberts was looking at her, but she would not turn her head and meet his eyes, partly from shyness, and partly from coquetry.
“Isn’t this the end?” she said, knowing that it was not, but speaking in order to relieve her sense of embarrassment.
“No, it isn’t over till half-past ten; there’s another forty minutes yet.” He consulted his wrist-watch elaborately. “I expect they’ll have a comic to finish up with.”