His instant alarm gratified her, although she continued to look offended, and to sit very upright in her chair.
“Don’t be angry, Elsie. I didn’t mean to offend you, honour bright. Make it up!”
The pianist began some rattling dance-music and the lights went out again.
Elsie immediately relaxed her pose, feeling her heart beat more quickly in mingled doubt and anticipation.
The doubt was resolved almost within the instant. Roberts pulled her towards him, bringing her face close to his, and whispered:
“Kiss and be friends!”
All the while that the last film was showing, Elsie lay almost in his arms, seeing nothing at all, conscious only of feeling alive as she had never felt alive before.
Even when it was all over and they rose to go, that sense of awakened vitality throbbed within her, and made her unaware of fatigue.
“Follow me,” said Roberts authoritatively, and took his place in front of her in the gangway. There he waited, meekly and like everybody else, until the people in front should have moved. But to Elsie there was masculinity in the shelter of his narrow, drooping shoulders, as he stood before her in his crumpled light overcoat, every now and then shifting from one foot to the other.
She followed him step by step, pulling her hair into place under the tam-o’-shanter, and settling it at its customary rakish angle.