Gradually Anna increased that license. She knew and she did not know what she was doing. She played a long game in which she said: “If our love is consummated too soon, the social loss will be balanced by a speedier marriage, because Hugo is honourable; but that will never happen.” Two years after that first kiss, when they were floating on the narrow river in a canoe, Hugo unfastened her blouse and exposed the creamy beauty of her bosom to the soft moonlight and she did not protest. That night he nearly possessed her, and after that night he learned through her unspoken, voluptuous suggestion all the technique of love-making this side of consummation.

When, finally, he called one night at her house and found that she was alone and that her parents and her brother would not return until the next day, they looked at each other with a shining agreement. He turned the lights out and they sat on the couch in the darkness, listening to the passing of people on the sidewalk outside. He undressed her. He whispered halting, passionate phrases. He asked her if she was afraid and let himself be laughed away from his own conscience. Then he took her and loved her.

Afterwards, going home again in the gloom of late night, he looked up at the stars and they stood still. He realized that a certain path of life had been followed to its conclusion. He felt initiated into the adult world. And it had been so simple, so natural, so sweet.... He threw a great stone into the river and laughed and walked on, after a while.

Through the summer that followed, Hugo and Anna ran the course of their affair. They loved each other violently and incessantly and with no other evil consequence than to invite the open “humphs” of village gossips and to involve him in several serious talks with her father. Their courtship was given the benefit of conventional doubt, however, and their innocence was hotly if covertly protested by the Blakes. Mrs. Danner coldly ignored every fragment of insinuation. She hoped that Hugo and Anna would announce their engagement and she hinted that hope. Hugo himself was excited and absorbed. Occasionally he thought he was sterile, with an inclination to be pleased rather than concerned if it was true.

He added tenderness to his characteristics. And he loved Anna too much. Toward the end of that summer she lost weight and became irritable. They quarrelled once and then again. The criteria for his physical conduct being vague in his mind, Hugo could not gauge it correctly. And he did not realize that the very ardour of his relation with her was abnormal. Her family decided to send her away, believing the opposite of the truth responsible for her nervousness and weakness. A week before she left, Hugo himself tired of his excesses.