I Forbid the Banns! — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ON THE KISS. QI beats, Bertha. My heart has found the life that makes it beat—my soul has found its sister soul.” | He had seated himself beside her and he felt for her hand. She placed it trustfully in his. They were sitting outside one of those brilliant tunnels radiating fromthe electric light of the quarter-deck. Only a few of the more restless of the passengers approached the place were they were sitting; still he did not think it prudent to make the attempt to kiss her. He held her hand and looked into her face. Even out- side the sphere of influence of the electric light he could see its white loveliness. He held her hand. He had a sudden yearning to kiss her. From what source the yearning to kiss her sprang, it would perhaps have been difficult for him to say. ‘ Soul meets soul on lover's lips,” Shelley sang. But Mr. Charl- ton and Miss Lancaster had just been expressing their fervent belief that their-own souls had met and mingled and become one, without the necessity for introducing the mystic agency of a kiss. On what grounds, then, should he yearn for that wholly superfluous kiss? ‘The kiss has received the apostolic benediction, but only as a mode of greeting between brethren. Unfortunately it was not the kiss of brethren that he yearned for. It was the kiss inspired by Eros, who, we know,.was intimately connected by birth with Aphrodite. That family has, for a considera- ble number of years, had an evil reputation, especially among such persons as live only in an atmosphere of spiritual love, which is just the opposite to that system of life of which Aphrodite was an exponent. Just as his yearning was at its highest the electric light gave a couple of intoxicated blinks, then shone forth in renewed splendor for about a minute, and then went out. The blackness of darkness into which the deck was plunged was appalling. It did not, however, cause Julian Charl- Gomichbookssco