Sophy felt awe steal over her. This was no boy that held her. His love made him her equal. And he offered her what she had craved without knowing it—the fire of love tempered with adoration.
"Give me your lips, my Wonder ... my white Wonder!" he was commanding, yet there was also pleading in his voice. "Give me your lips, that I may show you how I love you ... not with gross hunger, but with thirst ... divine thirst...."
That golden trance crept over her, as on the night before. Her head lay drowned in its thick hair against his breast. He stooped slowly, marvelling at the rapt beauty of her white, upturned face. Like a face coming slowly towards her through deep waters, his face bent nearer. There was that fine, quivering touch upon her lips—then their mouths melted into one....
This kiss was no less marvellous than their first had been. But it held this difference: With it she yielded herself consciously, though against her judgment.
They stood there tranced, after this long kiss was over, as they had sat hand in hand the evening before.
He said shakenly at last:
"'Too young'?... 'Too young'—am I? God!—I feel as though I had been from everlasting...."
X
But though Sophy yielded to these first bewildering moments of sudden glamour, she was not in the least minded to enter into a long, unbroken, spellbound dalliance. Loring found himself very short of kisses indeed during the next few weeks.