“Aw, go on!” he cackled. “You’re only foolin’!”
“You might try and see—if you weren’t so awfully slow. That’s mostly the trouble with you, Nathan—you’re slow!”
“And you won’t be mad——?”
“What if I am? A girl always loves the man who does things he wants, whether she gets mad or not.” Bernie had secured this sort of thing undoubtedly from her mother’s Pansy Series.
The boy’s embarrassment was so great that Bernice reached her hand out to him, a soft, damp hand, though she looked in the opposite direction. He took the hand, timidly at first, and considered it as Adam considered the Apple.
He sat up beside her with a tremendous yawn, as though he had lain too long and would change his position. As for the girl, she was a bit frightened, white-faced. But an atavism in her blood was militant. She was afraid and yet she wasn’t afraid. Any woman might explain it.
“Aw, can I really kiss you, Bernie?”
“I said so, didn’t I? And if you’re goin’ to do it, for pity’s sake, hurry up!”
He leaned over and kissed her on a peach-blown cheek, searing hot and zero cold by turns. And no more chaste kiss was ever given The Sex.
But Bernie responded in a way that Nathan never forgot. She turned her face, her nostrils breathed into his own, she kissed him—once!—twice!—three times!—heavy, impulsive, lumberous kisses, squarely on his mouth.