Why She Wanted a Kiss.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 193, 22 August 1885, Page 5

Why She Wanted a Kiss.

" Kiss m 3 again." Sybil Sartoris spoke these words in a grave, calm manner that betokened the serious import in which she held them, and as Uarbirt Holdfast bent tenderly forward and pressed his lip? softly to hers, she looked up to him in tho sky, cat-on-tbo-back-fence fashion that had so bewitched him in the golden-hued days of courtship, There WU3 no tint of deception in the puro nature of this girl, and her every act was the result of reflection, often profound. Brought up in Boston, sho had been all her lifo accustomed to put to its best use tho power of discernment which a thoughtful mind gave her. Surrounded a? she was by the mystic influences of Emorson, the Concord School of Philosophy, and several largo warehouses where mackerel were sold, it is small wonder that whon standing on tho threshold of womanhood, she beheld suiters for hor heart and hand approaching; she had analysed with critical care the hopes and fears of 6ach —had subjected tho character of evnry wooor to the rigid scrutiny of a mind that, soatod cro«i-legged on tho starry summit of psychological research, looked upon a man us only vivified protoplasm, and tho deepest emotions of tho heart as merely tho manifestations of a too active nerve centre.

Herbert knew this. Ho knew that this girl, the rounded curves of whoso figure imd tho dowy sweotnoss of whose lips would have made an anchorite leave his job without a pang, had naught of passion in her nature And so when ho had complied —oh, so gladly—with hor request, thero stalks from out of the banquet halls of his imaginati n, whore they had co long been unwelcome guests, the sheeted ghostß of doubt and apprehension. Ho knew now that Sybil loved him with a lovo that would ncvor faltor or fail—a lovo that, socurely built upon a foundation of rospoct and admiration, was now crowned withtho largo, roomy, mansard roof of n deathless, never-changing passion.

Her words proved it. Novcr before had sho oven as much as hinted at a kiss, and when ho bad sought to take ono sho had submitted to his caresses moro as a dutiful than as an ardent lover. But now ail was changed, and it was she who sought tho blisa -that a large, wellregulated, throe-story-and-bnsemont Idea alone can give. Tho thought wasocstacy.

" You lovo mo better to-day, Sibyl," ho said, "than you did yesterday. Is it not so, darling?" "No," nhoanswers, standing thoro calm and pulseless as a calm at high tido.

"Then why," ho says, me to kiss you?"

"did you ask

" Because," Sibyl replies, "I desired to ascertain whethor or not you had bcon drinking rum."