"Isn't it wonderful?"
She nodded, lips apart, eyes starry. Discarding his shield of constraint, he turned swiftly on her, catching the filmy fabric covering her arms and bringing her face toward him.
Her voice was level, conventional. "You mustn't." She tried to squirm away.
"Yes!" He whispered his urgent triumph.
His lips avid from long self-denial, he blent with the wild sweetness of hers. She remained quiescent a moment, then sought to free herself. He clung to her, as if his life depended on retaining the warm rapture of her kiss. She thought he would never end.
At last she pulled away, a trifle dazed with the force of his passion. His lips fell lower, kissing her shoulder, her arm, the hand squeezing the taut ball of her handkerchief. As she took even this from him, he fell to his knees beside her, pressing long kisses on the handkerchief, any symbol to satisfy the aching hunger of his body.
She watched him in wonder. Her hand faltered out and pressed back the damp hair from his forehead. "You poor boy! You poor, starved boy!"
The paroxysm over, he sat at her feet, moodily watching the lower reaches of the valley. He realized the breach of faith with Jane; but there was a perverse part of him that rejoiced at the duplicity. The other love was chaste, beside this; after all, he could love more than one woman.... Should he stop with one wrenched rose, when the bush was on fire with red beauty?
Again he sat beside her. "You know, Louise," he urged tentatively, enough withdrawn from the scene to study her reaction to his conduct, "I've been straight with women.... You are the only girl I have kissed in a year."
It trembled on her tongue to say that he had made up for lost time; no, that would sound too flippant. "I know, I know," her answer rang rich with soft understanding.