"Oh, I forgot, I forgot," she half cried and half sobbed. And then she seemed to grow frightened, both of him and of herself.
"No, no!" she cried as he returned to her, with outstretched arms. "No, we—we must go back and be as we were—before." And he could see that some subtle change had come over her. Until that moment she had, perhaps, been the pursuer. Now, and hereafter—well, she had become the child of uncounted ages of femininity.
She told him, again and again, that it would make no difference, that they should both forget that little blot on what had been their perfect happiness. And for the rest of her visit she busied herself about the apartment, fluttering from room to room with her bird-like activity. There was a strange smile in the corners of her mouth, a humanizing, maddening sort of smile, Hartley thought it, as he followed her gloomily about while she readjusted his furniture where it displeased her and here and there rearranged his flowers and prints and dishes with her deft fingers. From time to time, in hanging his pictures and curios about the walls, she called on him to help her. This he seemed to do submissively, almost repentantly.
Scarcely a word had passed between them until Cordelia had come to the draping of what Mrs. Spaulding had called the Turkish corner. Above a broad, low divan two heavy pistoleted Arabian spear-heads had been hung crosswise from the ceiling. Over these a pair of Bagdad portières were to be draped.
Standing on a chair, Cordelia tried twice to reach over the spear-heads, but they were too high for her.
"Let me try," said Hartley. He hung them, but they were badly draped, and had to be taken down again. Cordelia pointed out to him for the second time that there was one particular way in which they had to be swung. She herself made a last effort to reach the horizontal spear-bar. In doing so her hair tumbled down over her face. She tossed it back with her free hand, and looked down at him for a moment, questioningly.
"Oh, I know!" she cried, with a sudden illuminating thought. "I know! You lift me up."
She laughed with childish abandon. He took her fragile, sinuous, pulsing body in his arms—she was very light—and lifted her till she was high above his head. She was laughing, and found it hard to balance her body with his arms so tightly about her knees. The portière fell from her hands, and lay in a huddled mass at their feet.
She fought bitterly with herself, in the space of that one short gasp, but something—she scarcely knew what—confounded her better judgment. She looked one second down into his white face and their eyes met. Then her body drooped limply down to him, deeper and deeper, into his arms; and her head, with all its wealth of tumbled gold, fell just over his shoulder, against his face.
The next moment portière and the world were forgotten, and without knowing it she was offering him her mouth, and he was holding her limp and sobbing body close in his arms and kissing her warm lips again and again.