Part 28 (1/2)

”I know it,” he answered, ”and I don't want you to be Isolde. If only she had married Tristan in the first place--”

”They might have been divorced in the second place.”

”Don't be--don't talk that way. I'm in deadly earnest,” he pleaded, but she laughed evasively.

”That was very heady sherry you gave us to-day.”

He shook his head sadly, as over the flippancy of a child, and took her hand in both of his.

”It's broad daylight, Mr. Forbes, and this is Madison Avenue.”

”But n.o.body can see us,” he answered. ”Look at the rain.”

”What difference does that make?” she answered, tugging at her hand. But she looked, and saw how they were closed away from the world. Sheets of water splashed and spread so thickly that they covered the windows with gray curtains.

It was as if a brief tropical flood had burst upon New York.

Somehow it did make a difference that n.o.body could see. It always makes a difference in us that n.o.body can see us.

Even Forbes felt the change in Persis. Perhaps it was only that her resistance was minutely diminished, or that one of her many fears was removed, one support gone. As a soldier he had sometime felt that slackening of morale across the s.p.a.ce between firing-lines. It is then that the military genius orders a charge and turns the enemy's momentary weakness into a panic.

So Forbes charged Persis. In his face gathered a fierce determination.

His fingers tightened upon hers, no longer caressingly, but cruelly, till they hurt. He pulled her right hand across him with his right, and thrust his left arm back of her, caught her farther shoulder in the crook of it, and drew her close till their faces almost touched, till her eyes were so close to his that they were grotesquely one.

And then he paused. He lacked the elan to seize the red flag of her lips. He paused weakly to stare at her and to beseech the kiss he might have captured.

”Kiss me!” he said.

So silly a phrase for so warm a deed. She shook her head, and her fright was gone. She taunted him from her eyes as from an unconquered citadel.

”Kiss me!” he repeated, feeling poltroon and idiotic.

She did not upbraid him or feel any anger or any helplessness; she just studied him, ignoring the fact that he held her body close to him in a crus.h.i.+ng embrace. After all, that meant nothing. Almost anybody might hold her so at a dance for all the world to see. Nothing mattered, she thought, so long as their souls did not embrace.

But therein she was wrong, for their souls were not dancing to music. He was demanding her love, her submission to his love. Their souls were debating that vital question, without speech, yet with every argument.

She enjoyed the struggle. She was striking the first of the matches. She would watch the pretty blue flame a moment before it blazed red, then she would blow it out with a little breath from the lips he demanded.

It was fascinating to see how tremendously excited he was over the privilege of touching his lips to hers. It was a quaint little act to make so much of. He was a splendid man, brave, charming, good to see, and now he was crimson and fierce-eyed and breathing hard, trembling with the struggle to keep from taking what was so close. She smiled at him triumphantly. She was about to puff out the flame with a whiff of sarcasm, when he said, with all the simplicity of truth:

”I couldn't take a kiss unless you gave it to me. I don't want to kiss you unless you want me to. May I?”

It was such a boyish plea that she could not be sophisticated in its presence. She could not answer such hunger with wit. She felt a sudden power from somewhere pressing her head forward to his lips and her heart closer to his.

She smiled tenderly with veiled eyes, and no longer held off. With a gasp of joy he understood and caught her against him. But just as their lips would have met another instinct saved her.

She had always felt a kind of sanct.i.ty about her mouth, a preciousness that must not be cheaply cast away. Among all the kisses she had given and taken there still remained this first kiss, still vestal and virgin.

And that was the kiss he asked.