Part 11 (1/2)
There was not a foot between our two beds, so I bent over and took her soft white shoulders in my arms and kissed her. All the heaped-up sweetness of the whitest, freshest flowers of the spring seemed in my embrace as I kissed her, so soft, so fragrant, so pure; and as the moonlight was the white fire in our blood. Softly I released her, stroked her brown hair, and turned again to my pillow. Presently the little voice was in the room again,--
”Mayn't I hold your hand? Somehow I feel lonely and frightened.”
So our hands made a bridge across which our dreams might pa.s.s through the night, and after a little while I knew that she slept.
As I lay thus holding her hand, and listening to her quiet breathing, I realised once more what my young Alastor had meant by the purity of high pa.s.sion. For indeed the moonlight that fell across her bosom was not whiter than my thoughts, nor could any kiss--were it even such a kiss as Venus promised to the betrayer of Psyche--even in its fiercest delirium, be other than dross compared with the wild white peace of those silent hours when we lay thus married and maiden side by side.
CHAPTER X
HOW ONE MAKES LOVE AT THIRTY
My sleeplessness while Nicolete slept had not been all ecstasy, for I had come to a bitter resolution; and next morning, when we were once more on our way, I took a favourable opportunity of conveying it to Nicolete.
”Nicolete,” I said, as we rested awhile by the roadside, ”I have something serious to say to you.”
”Yes, dear,” she said, looking rather frightened.
”Well, dear, it is this,--our love must end with our holiday. No good can come of it.”
”But oh, why? I love you.”
”Yes, and I love you,--love you as I never thought I could love again.
Yet I know it is all a dangerous dream,--a trick of our brains, an illusion of our tastes.”
”But oh, why? I love you.”
”Yes, you do to-day, I know; but it couldn't last. I believe I could love you for ever; but even so, it wouldn't be right. You couldn't go on loving me. I am too old, too tired, too desillusione, perhaps too selfish.”
”I will love you always!” said girl Nicolete.
”Whereas you,” I continued, disregarding the lovely refrain of her tear-choked voice, ”are standing on the wonderful threshold of life, waiting in dreamland for the dawn. And it will come, and with it the fairy prince, with whom you shall wander hand in hand through all its fairy rose-gardens; but I, dear Nicolete,--I am not he.”
Nicolete did not speak.
”I know,” I continued, pressing her hand, ”that I may seem young enough to talk like this, but some of us get through life quicker than others, and when we say, 'It is done,' it is no use for onlookers to say, 'Why, it is just beginning!' Believe me, Nicolete, I am not fit husband for you.”
”Then shall I take no other,” said Nicolete, with set face.
”Oh, yes, you will,” I rejoined; ”let but a month or two pa.s.s, and you will see how wise I was, after all. Besides, there are other reasons, of which there is no need to speak--”
”What reasons?”
”Well,” I said, half laughing, ”there is the danger that, after all, we mightn't agree. There is nothing so perilously difficult as the daily intercourse of two people who love each other. You are too young to realise its danger. And I couldn't bear to see our love worn away by the daily dropping of tears, not to speak of its being rent by the dynamite of daily quarrels. We know each other's tastes, but we know hardly anything of each other's natures.”
Nicolete looked at me strangely. 'Troth, it was a strange way to make love, I knew.
”And what else?” she asked somewhat coldly.
”Well, then, though it's not a thing one cares to speak of, I'm a poor man--”