His fingers met hers again. The glass fell and crunched beneath his foot as he stepped to her. She was hardly cognisant of his arm drawing her. Rather what she felt was some irresistible power compelling her to itself. The face of the youth, still gay with laughter, drew down upon hers, closer, closer, changed, seemed to become dimly luminous. Her arms, without volition, crept upward to his shoulders. She was incongruously and painfully conscious of something pressing into her bosom, one of his pearl shirt-studs, and drew away from it slightly. He bent his head after her. And then, as their lips met and merged—the shock!
She went limp under it.
After a long, long minute in which were blended the pulsations of the music, the undermining odours of the night, the look of the passing girl's eyes (how heavy were her own now!), the memory of that broken whisper overheard in the limousine, and the surge of the blood in her veins, she heard him say:
"Let's go."
"Where?"
"I've got my car here."
She was silent, deeply, passively acquiescent to his will. Misconstruing her speechlessness, he urged:
"Come on, sweetie! We'll take a fifty-mile-an-hour dip into the landscape. The little boat can go some."
"I'll have to get a wrap."
"Take my coat."