Part 44 (2/2)
”But--” He took her hand.
His suffering was intolerable. It was torture of the most exquisite kind. Her hand pressed his. Something snapped in him. His left hand hovered shaking over her shoulder, and then touched her shoulder, and he could feel her left hand on his arm. The embrace was clumsy in its instinctive and unskilled violence, but its clumsiness was redeemed by all his sincerity and all hers. His eyes were within six inches of her eyes, full of delicious shame, anxiety, and surrender. They kissed...
He had amorously kissed a woman. All his past life sank away, and he began a new life on the impetus of that supreme and final emotion. It was an emotion that in its freshness, agitating and divine, could never be renewed. He had felt the virgin answer of her lips on his. She had told him everything, she had yielded up her mystery, in a second of time. Her courage in responding to his caress ravished and amazed him.
She was so unaffected, so simple, so heroic. And the cool, delicate purity of those lips! And the faint feminine odour of her flesh and even of her stuffs! Dreams and visions were surpa.s.sed. He said to himself, in the flood-tide of masculinity--
”My G.o.d! She's mine.”
And it seemed incredible.
FIVE.
She was sitting in the office chair; he on the desk. She said in a trembling voice--
”I should never have come to the Five Towns again, if you hadn't--”
”Why not?”
”I couldn't have stood it. I couldn't.” She spoke almost bitterly, with a peculiar smile on her twitching lips.
To him it seemed that she had resumed her mystery, that he had only really known her for one instant, that he was bound to a woman entrancing, n.o.ble, but impenetrable. And this, in spite of the fact that he was close to her, touching her, tingling to her in the confined, crepuscular intimacy of the cubicle. He could trace every movement of her breast as she breathed, and yet she escaped the inward searching of his gaze. But he was happy. He was happy enough to repel all anxieties and inquietudes about the future. He was steeped in the bliss of the miracle. This was but the fourth day, and they were vowed.
”It was only Monday,” he began.
”Monday!” she exclaimed. ”I have thought of you for over a year.” She leaned towards him. ”Didn't you know? Of course you did! ... You couldn't bear me at first.”
He denied this, blus.h.i.+ng, but she insisted.
”You don't know how awful it was for me yesterday when you didn't come!”
he murmured.
”Was it?” she said, under her breath. ”I had some very important letters to write.” She clasped his hand.
There it was again! She spoke just like a man of business, immersed in secret schemes.
”It's awfully funny,” he said. ”I scarcely know anything about you, and yet--”
”I'm Janet's friend!” she answered. Perhaps it was the delicatest reproof of imagined distrust.
”And I don't want to,” he went on. ”How old are you?”
”Twenty-four,” she answered sweetly, acknowledging his right to put such questions.
”I thought you were.”
”I suppose you know I've got no relatives,” she said, as if relenting from her att.i.tude of reproof. ”Fortunately, father left just enough money for me to live on.”
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