The Crux | Page 5

at that.
"And don't feel so bad--I'll come back some time to see you."
"No, you won't!" she answered with sudden fierceness. "You'll just go
and stay and I never shall see you again!"
He drew her closer to him. "And do you care so much Viva?"
"Of course, I care!" she said, "Haven't we always been friends, the best
of friends?"
"Yes, you and Aunt Rella have been about all I had," he admitted with
a cheerful laugh. "I hope I'll make more friends out yonder. But Viva--"
his hand pressed closer "is it only friends?"
She took fright at once and drew away from him. "You mustn't do that,
Morton!"
"Do what?" A shaft of moonlight shone on his teasing face. "What am I
doing?" he said.
It is difficult--it is well nigh impossible--for a girl to put a name to

certain small cuddlings not in themselves terrifying, nor even
unpleasant, but which she obscurely feels to be wrong.
Viva flushed and was silent he could see the rich color flood her face.
"Come now don't be hard on a fellow!" he urged. "I shan't see you
again in ever so long. You'll forget all about me before a year's over."
She shook her head, still silent.
"Won't you speak to me Viva?"
"I wish " She could not find the words she wanted. "Oh, I wish you
wouldn't!"
"Wouldn't what, Girlie? Wouldn't go away? Sorry to disoblige but I
have to. There's no place for me here."
The girl felt the sad truth of that.
"Aunt Rella will get used to it after a while. I'll write to her I'll make
lots of money and come back in a few years astonish you all!
Meanwhile kiss me goodby, Viva!"
She drew back shyly. She had never kissed him. She had never in her
life kissed any man younger than an uncle.
"No, Morton you mustn't " She shrank away into the shadow.
But, there was no great distance to shrink to, and his strong arms soon
drew her close again.
"Suppose you never see me again," he said. "Then you'll wish you
hadn't been so stiff about it."
She thought of this dread possibility with a sudden chill of horror, and
while she hesitated, he took her face between her hands and kissed her
on the mouth.

Steps were heard coming down the path. "They're on," he said with a
little laugh. "Good-by, Viva!"
He vaulted the fence and was gone.
"What are you doing here, Vivian?" demanded her father.
"I was saying good-by to Morton," she answered with a sob.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself--philandering out here in the
middle of the night with that scapegrace! Come in the house and go to
bed at once--it's ten o'clock."
Bowing to this confused but almost equally incriminating chronology,
she followed him in, meekly enough as to her outward seeming, but
inwardly in a state of stormy tumult.
She had been kissed!
Her father's stiff back before her could not blot out the radiant, melting
moonlight, the rich sweetness of the flowers, the tender, soft, June
night.
"You go to bed," said he once more. "I'm ashamed of you."
"Yes, father," she answered.
Her little room, when at last she was safely in it and had shut the door
and put a chair against it she had no key seemed somehow changed.
She lit the lamp and stood looking at herself in the mirror. Her eyes
were star-bright. Her cheeks flamed softly. Her mouth looked guilty
and yet glad.
She put the light out and went to the window, kneeling there, leaning
out in the fragrant stillness, trying to arrange in her mind this mixture
of grief, disapproval, shame and triumph.
When the Episcopal church clock struck eleven, she went to bed in

guilty haste, but not to sleep.
For a long time she lay there watching the changing play of moonlight
on the floor.
She felt almost as if she were married.
CHAPTER II
BAINVILLE EFFECTS.
Lockstep, handcuffs, ankle-ball-and-chain, Dulltoil and dreary food and
drink; Small cell, cold cell, narrow bed and hard; High wall, thick wall,
window iron-barred; Stone-paved, stone-pent little prison yard- Young
hearts weary of monotony and pain, Young hearts weary of reiterant
refrain: "They say they do what will people think?"
AT the two front windows of their rather crowded little parlor sat Miss
Rebecca and Miss Josie Foote, Miss Sallie being out on a foraging
expedition marketing, as it were, among their neighbors to collect fresh
food for thought.
A tall, slender girl in brown passed on the opposite walk.
"I should think Vivian Lane would get tired of wearing brown," said
Miss Rebecca.
"I don't know why she should," her sister promptly protested, "it's a
good enough wearing color, and becoming to