"I am to be a year away. It is the last time. It is to finish."
"A year! A year! Oh, Dora, a year!"
Her face was close to his, her lips a shade apart, her wide eyes lifted to him. Rare, rare he had thought her; perfect he knew her. That mystic thing the night had held, held them mute, magnetised, privy from all the world, alone. They stood so close the air he drew had first caressed her. They stood so close that her young bosom almost told him how she breathed. Slowly, as he were drawn to it, he stooped towards her; steadily, as she were held, she suffered his face to approach. Their lips touched, stayed for a space—smaller, infinitely less, than mind can conceive; wider, immeasurably more, as their joined spirits reckoned time, and rushed through time in bliss of ecstasy, than mind can reckon space.
And then he kissed her.
Crimson she flamed in the places of her colour—flaming and more flaming and deeper yet their flame. Their sharp limitations drove her driven white about them; from throat to flame and flame to brow as lily was her hue. She did not move nor speak, and he, amazed before her rareness, drew back a step. She might have been a statue, so still she stood. She might not have breathed, nor thought, so motionless her breast, her eyes so wide, so still her gaze. Only that glowing scarlet on her cheeks, only her skin's transparency—soft, deep, as if beneath it some jewel gave a secret light—declared her mortal and proclaimed she lived.
A space passed. She came from the trance in which she seemed to be. She gave a little sigh. As if she had been struck, not kissed; as if she had been robbed, not possessed. "Oh! Percival!" she said.
And he: "Oh! Dora!"
He sprung to her, took both her hands; clasped them in his and adored her with his eyes; bent his head to them and raised them to his lips.
"Oh, Dora, have I hurt you? Oh, Dora, I love you so!"
"Let me go in, Percival!"