He held his breath: the thick beating of his heart was like a muffled hammer.
"This isn't the way I kiss Val."
"Isabel!" exclaimed Lawrence. He held out his arms again but they closed on the empty firelight: she had gone dancing off, the most fugitive, the most insubstantial of mistresses, nothing left of her to him but the memory of that moth's wing touch.
"Isabel, come here!" He, sprang to his feet. From the other end of the room Isabel turned round, wistful, her head bent, glancing up at him under her eyelashes.
"Oh must you have me?—all of me? Oh Lawrence!—well then—"
She advanced step by step, slowly. Lawrence waited, convinced that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity. He waited and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a moment on his breast, and then, "Let me go: dearest, don't hold me!"
He kept her long enough to ask "But are you mine?"
"Yes," said Isabel, sighing.
"This is a grudging gift, Isabel."
"Oh no," she whispered, "not grudging. All my heart: all of me.
Only don't hold me, I'm still afraid."