There was a silence: her young lips melted against his; lingered; her arms tightened around his neck. And the next instant she had freed herself, hot-cheeked, disconcerted.
"Oh, it, was—quite true——" she stammered, resting against the banisters with one hand pressed tightly over her heart. "My curiosity is satisfied.... Please!—Jim, dear—we ought to behave rationally—oughtn't we?"
But she did not resist when he framed her face between his hands; and she suffered his lips again, and again her slight response and the grey eyes vaguely regarding him shook his self-control.
"Will you try to love me, Steve?"
"I seem to be doing it."
"Is it really love, Steve? Do you truly care for me?"
"Oh, dear, yes!" she said, with a quick-drawn breath which ended in a quiet sigh, scarcely audible. Then a faintly humorous smile dawned in her eyes: "You're changing, Jim. You always were very wonderful to me, but you also were mortal. Now, you're changing; you are putting on a glorious, iridescent immortality before my eyes. I'm quite bewildered—quite dazzled—and my mind isn't very clear—especially when you kiss me——"
"Are you making fun of me?"
"No, I'm not. That's the way with the gods when they start a love affair with a mortal girl. Sometimes she runs, but they always catch her or turn her into a tree or a waterfall or something they can acquire and fence in, and visit like a plot in a cemetery. And if she doesn't run away, then she just falls into a silly trance with her Olympian lover, and somebody comes along and raises the dickens with them both.... And now I'd like to know what's going to happen to me?"
"You're going to try to fall in love with me first."