"Wait," she bade playfully, "I'll bet I can make you rub your lips again."

"No, you can't."

"Hold still!" she leaned toward me; I could look down into her bosom. She just touched my lips with her forefinger.

"Now!" she exclaimed triumphantly.

"—think you've tickled me, do you?"

"—just wait!"

I forgot myself. My lips tickled and I rubbed them with the length of a finger ... Hildreth laughed....

"Hildreth!"

I leaned toward my friend's wife, calling her again by her first name.

I lay in a half-reclining posture, my head almost against her hip. I was looking up into her face. She glanced down at me with a quick start at the tone of my voice. She looked gravely for a moment into my face. I observed an enigmatic something deep in her eyes ... which sank slowly back as the image of a face does, in water,—as the face itself is withdrawn. She moved apart a little, with a motion of slow deliberation.