But he crouched before her, grasping the folds of her gown in both hands. He even laughed a little, tossing back his short locks, that had been rumpled against her knee.
"Be angry, then...." he murmured. "Be angry.... What do the famishing care for anger?... Yes.... I thirst for you.... I don't hunger for you.... There's nothing so gross as hunger in my longing.... But I thirst.... I thirst.... Oh, Beautiful!... Be kind.... What is it to you if I worship you?... Can the wind kindle the moon? You should have seen the poor, mad wind trying to kindle her, as I did, when I rode here to you this night!... He raved at her as I rave at you.... And she was just like you—oh, so like you!... Cold, white, still, superior ... far off there in a heaven of her own ... like you.... He couldn't reach her.... Couldn't warm her.... Like me with you...."
He broke off, a spasm marring the excited beauty of his face.
"Oh, don't I know I can't warm you...!" he cried. "Not if I bathed you in my heart's blood—it would slip from you like a red sunset from the moon. White Wonder ... cold Moon-Woman!... Now I know what Endymion felt.... I know—I know...."
Sophy sat gazing at him, fascinated. She was lapped in a sort of wonder. Here was Love at his miracles again. Could this be "Morry" Loring—keen sportsman, crack polo player—this frantic young Rhapsodist at her knee, talking poetry as though it were his native tongue? He seemed unreal to her. She, herself, seemed unreal. He rushed on:
"Yes, yes!... You've called me Endymion in mockery. But I am Endymion.... Did you know that when you mocked me?... Did you know that I am really the man that drew down the Lady Moon?..."
He laughed again. He was so amazingly beautiful as he crouched there, laughing with love in the firelight, that Sophy quivered with it. She felt dazed. She felt some one other than herself. She began to feel that there was a stranger within her—a woman she had never known. Some one wild and shy and spun of moonbeams—a sort of fairy-Sophy that this ecstatic youth was moulding out of dream-stuff—that was coming into ensorceled life under his touch as Galatea softened from marble into flesh under the caresses of Pygmalion....
She felt as if she must break away from him—escape from the sound of his feverish, flooding words—and that bold-timidity of his eyes that so fascinated her. She tried to rise, but he hemmed her in, with his arms upon her chair, encircling yet not touching her.
He laughed very low now—it was like a sort of sobbing.
"Oh, Selene.... Selene.... Selene...." he murmured. "Let yourself be loved ... with worship ... always with worship. I will never forget that you are a goddess, too.... But you shall never be lonely again ... if you will only bend to me.... There'll never be tears in your beautiful eyes again.... And you were lonely—you know you were.... It's lonely work, Selene, shining alone in the roof of heaven...."