“Little Chris....”
He started. This was reality. Sophie’s voice. Her breath.... And her bosom heaved and touched his face.
“Do you still love me?” the girl asked.
In Christopher’s tired eyes despair was reflected. So she knows? So she has always known what it has cost him such torture to hide? Then why has she not been kinder to him? Why did she leave him to suffer so much?
“Do you love me?”
“I always loved you,” said the boy and his voice came dangerously near to a sob.
Sophie stroked him like a child requiring consolation.
“Poor little Chris.... And we are all just as poor.”
Suddenly her hand stopped on the boy’s brow, where his hair, like his father’s, curved boldly over his forehead. He leant his head back and with a maidenly abandon gave himself up to Sophie’s will. The girl leaned over him. She looked at him for a long while, sadly as if to take leave, then ... kissed his lips.
A kiss, long restrained, meant for another. And yet, the annihilation of a childhood.