He possessed in his heart a barometric scale of her kisses, and this was
a set-fair kiss, a kiss with a somewhat violent beginning and a
reluctant close. Then she held her cheek for him to kiss. Both cheek and
lips were freshly cold from the night air. Mr. Prohack was aware of an
immense, romantic felicity. And he immediately became flippant, not
aloud, but secretly, to hide himself from himself.

He thought:

"It's a positive fact that I've been kissing this girl of a woman for a
quarter of a century, and she's fat."

But beneath his flippancy and beneath his felicity there was a
lancinating qualm, which, if he had expressed it he would have expressed
thus:

"If anything _did_ happen to her, it would be the absolute ruin of me."

The truth was that his felicity frightened him. Never before had he been
seriously concerned for her well-being. The reaction from grave alarm
lighted up the interior of his mysterious soul with a revealing flash of
unique intensity.

"What are all these lights burning for?" she murmured. Lights were
indeed burning everywhere. He had been in a mood to turn on but not to
turn off.

"Oh!" he said, "I was just wandering about."

"I'll go straight upstairs," she said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as