The Kiss
There was once a young girl and a very young man. They sat on a stone on a promontory that ran out into the lake, and the waves splashed at their feet. They sat silent, each wrapped in thought, and watched the sun go down.
He thought that he should very much like to kiss her. When he looked at her mouth, it occurred to him that this was just what it was meant for. He had, to be sure, seen girls prettier than she was, and he was really in love with someone else; but this other he could surely never kiss, because she was an ideal, a star, and what availed “the desire of the moth for the star”?
She thought that she should very much like to have him kiss her, so that she might have occasion to be downright angry with him and show how deeply she despised him. She would get up, pull her skirts tightly round her, give him a glance brimmed with icy contempt, and go off, erect and calm, without any unnecessary haste. But in order that he might not divine what she thought, she asked in a low, soft voice, “Do you think there is another life after this?”
He thought it would be easier to kiss her if he said yes. But he could not remember for certain what he might have said on other occasions about the same subject, and he was afraid of contradicting himself. He therefore looked her deep in the eyes and answered, “There are times when I think so.”
This answer pleased her extraordinarily, and she thought: At least I like his hair—and his forehead, too. It’s only a pity his nose is so ugly, and then of course he has no standing—he’s just a student who is reading for his examinations. That was not the sort of beau to vex her friends with.
He thought: Now I can certainly kiss her. He was, nevertheless, terribly afraid; he had never before kissed a girl of good family, and he wondered if it might not be dangerous. Her father was lying asleep in a hammock a little way off, and he was the mayor of the town.
She thought: Perhaps it will be still better if I give him a box on the ear when he kisses me.
And she thought again: Why doesn’t he kiss me? Am I so ugly and disagreeable?
She leaned forward over the water to see her reflection, but her image was broken by the splashing of the water.
She thought again: I wonder how it will feel when he kisses me. As a matter of fact she had only been kissed once, by a lieutenant after a ball at the town hotel. He had smelt so abominably of punch and cigars that she had felt but little flattered, although to be sure he was a lieutenant, but otherwise she had not much cared for the kiss. Furthermore she hated him because he had not been attentive to her afterwards or indeed shown any interest in her at all.
While they sat so, each engrossed in private thoughts, the sun went down and it grew dark.
And he thought: Seeing that she is still sitting with me, though the sun is gone and it has become dark, it may be that she wouldn’t so much object to my kissing her.
Then he laid his arm softly around her neck.
She had not expected this at all. She had imagined he would merely kiss her and nothing more, and with that she would give him a box on the ear and go off like a princess. Now she didn’t know what she should do; she wanted of course to be angry with him, but at the same time she didn’t want to lose the kiss. She therefore sat quite still.
Thereupon he kissed her.
It felt much more strange than she had supposed. She felt that she was growing pale and faint, she entirely forgot that she was to give him a box on the ear and that he was only a student reading for his examination.
But he thought of a passage in a book by a religious physician on The Sex Life of Woman, which read: “One must guard against letting the marital embrace come under the dominion of sensuality.” And he thought that this must be very difficult to guard against, if even a kiss could do so much.
When the moon came up, they were still sitting there and kissing.
She whispered into his ear: “I loved you from the first hour I saw you.”
And he replied: “There has never been anyone in the world for me but you.”
