"Gawd, Ginger, the poor devil ain't dead neither! Lift him up carefully. There's his right arm over there, and his back---- Oh, my gawd! Poor devil!"
Thus had the battalion stretcher-bearers found him the day before. . . .
"Go away at once! Can't you see I'm with a lady. Molly, dear, where are you? What is this dirty-looking fellow doing here at all?"
But Molly for the moment seemed aloof. He saw her there, standing in the path in front of him--so close and yet somehow so curiously far away.
"Molly, do you hear that noise--that strange beating in the air? I think I'm going to be ill. Perhaps two close together are too much."
But no--apparently not. Suddenly everything was clear again, and there was Molly with the autumn wind blowing the soft tendrils of hair back from the nape of her neck; Molly, with the skirt that betokens the half-way period between flapperhood and coming out; Molly, with her lithe young figure half turned from him as she watched the sun sinking over the distant hills.
"They adore being kissed." The words of the wonderful Johnson major were ringing in his brain as he watched her, and suddenly something surged up within him. What matter rules and theories? What matter practice? There is only one way to kiss a girl, and rules and theories avail not one jot. With a quick step he had her in his arms, and, with his pulses hammering with the wonder of it, he watched her face come round to his. He kissed her cheek, her eyes, her mouth--shyly at first, and then with gathering confidence as a boy should kiss a girl.
The sweetness of it, the newness of it, the eternal joy of a woman in a man's arms for the first time! Surely it had never been quite like that with any one else before. Of course, other people kissed, but--this was different. Suddenly the girl disengaged her arms and wound them gently round his neck. She pulled his head towards her, and kissed him again and again, while he felt her heart beating against his coat.
Almost he missed the whispered words coming faintly from somewhere in the neighbourhood of his tie.
The boy's voice was shaky, his grip almost crushed her.
"Do you, Billy? I'm so glad! I want you to love me, because--because----"
"Say it, sweetheart, say it." He held her at arm's-length--no longer bashful, no longer wondering whether he dared; but insistent, imperious, a young god for the moment. "Because what?"