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nor what an effort it needed for him to answer so lightly.
‘Oh, I don’t mind your kissing me now and then. It
doesn’t hurt me and it gives you pleasure.’
Occasionally she went so far as to ask him to take her out
to dinner, and the offer, coming from her, filled him with
rapture.
‘I wouldn’t do it to anyone else,’ she said, by way of apol-
ogy. ‘But I know I can with you.’
‘You couldn’t give me greater pleasure,’ he smiled.
She asked him to give her something to eat one evening
towards the end of April.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Where would you like to go after-
wards?’
‘Oh, don’t let’s go anywhere. Let’s just sit and talk. You
don’t mind, do you?’
‘Rather not.’
He thought she must be beginning to care for him. Three
months before the thought of an evening spent in conver-
sation would have bored her to death. It was a fine day, and
the spring added to Philip’s high spirits. He was content
with very little now.
‘I say, won’t it be ripping when the summer comes along,’
he said, as they drove along on the top of a ‘bus to Soho—she
had herself suggested that they should not be so extravagant
as to go by cab. ‘We shall be able to spend every Sunday on
the river. We’ll take our luncheon in a basket.’
She smiled slightly, and he was encouraged to take her
hand. She did not withdraw it.
‘I really think you’re beginning to like me a bit,’ he

Of Human Bondage