“For half an hour.”

“You should have woke me.”

“I should never have thought of doing so.”

“You did not even kiss me!”

“Yes, I did, I kissed one of your pretty little rosebuds.”

“Which?”

“The one on the left.”

She uncovered it with a genuine air of innocence and tried to touch it with her lips.

“Oh, how tiresome!” said she. “I cannot kiss it in my turn.”

“And why should you like to kiss it in your turn?”

“To place my lips where your's have lain.”

She renewed the attempt.

“I can do it! Well,” she said, “you gave it a kiss just now for your own sake, let your lips touch it now for my sake.”

Thereupon I leant over her and taking the rosebud between my lips I caressed it with the tip of my tongue.

She gave a little cry of pleasure:

“Oh, how nice!”

“As nice as yesterday's kiss?”

“Oh! yesterday's kiss. It is so long since, I cannot remember.”

“Shall I begin again?”

“You know I should like you to, since you told me that was the proper way to kiss people you loved.”

“But I don't know yet whether I love you.”

“As for me, I am quite sure that I do love you dearly. So do not kiss me if you don't like to do it, but I shall kiss you all the same.”

And as on the previous day she glued her lips to mine, with this difference, that this time her tongue touched my teeth.

I could not have got away had I wished to do so, she hugged me so tightly.

Her head fell back and with half closed eyes she murmured:

“Oh, how I love you!”

The kiss made me mad; I snatched her, so to speak, from the bed, and pressing her closely to my heart I covered her bosom with kisses.

“Oh, what are you doing, I feel quite faint?”

These words brought me to my senses, for it was not thus, by surprise, that I wished to possess her.