His first sensation on awaking next morning was of that stolen kiss. All night he had been dreaming of it. All night he had been conscious of the porcelain smoothness of her hand held closely in his own. He closed his eyes against the amber shaft of sunlight which streamed from the window across the counterpane. He strove to recall those dreams; but the harder he strove the dimmer grew the lamps in the haunted chamber of remembrance. He saw vague shapes, which receded from him and melted. Since dreams failed him, he flung wide the windows of imagination.
He saw himself walking with his arm about her, between pollarded trees along a silver road. She clung against his breast like a blown spray of lilac. Now he was stretched at her feet in the greenest of green meadows, while above the curve of her knees her brooding smile watched him. He pictured her, always in new landscapes of more than earthly beauty, enacting a hundred scenes of uninterrupted tenderness.
The burden of his longing made him weary. Until he had kissed her, he had had no real understanding of what love meant; she had been to him an idea—an enchanting, disembodied spirit. Now she was white and warm, exquisitely clothed with glowing flesh. It was not the magic cloak any longer, but Desire herself, sweetly perverse and wilfully cold, that he worshiped.
How old he had become since last night, and yet how young! In kissing her he had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge; from now on his thirst would grow unquenchably till he knew her as himself. All that that knowledge might mean passed before his mind in slow procession. Ominous as the rustle of God’s feet in Eden, he could hear her humming her plaintive warning:
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard.”
He threw back the clothes and jumped out. Such imaginings were not allowed. But they returned. Like a snow-capped mountain in the dawning, his manhood caught the rose-red glow of passion and trembled, a tower of flame and ivory, above the imperiled valleys of experience.
As he dressed he molded the future to any shape he chose, rolled it into a ball and molded it afresh. Now that he had kissed her, all things were possible. His interest in all the world was quickened. His work and success again became important. He thought of her thin little high-heeled shoes, her dancing decorative way of walking, the costly frailty of her dress. He would need money—heaps of it—to marry her.
It was half-an-hour later, while he sat at breakfast, that a small cloud loomed on his horizon. It grew out of the sobering effect which comes of being among everyday people. A doubt arose in his mind as to the propriety of his last night’s actions. He’d whisked her away from the station without letting her see her mother, and had brought her home late after driving for hours through the darkness. Would Vashti consider him a safe person after such behavior? He knew that Eden Row wouldn’t. But in Desire’s company he lost sight of conventions in the absolute rightness of their being together. Besides, as he knew to his cost, she was well able to take care of herself. Strangers might think—— It didn’t matter what they thought. Nevertheless, it was with some trepidation that he approached the telephone and heard Vashti answer; “You brought my baby-girl home rather late. I hope you had a good time.—Oh, no, I didn’t mind; but I should have if it had been any one but Teddy.”
He wondered whether Desire had told her mother that he had kissed her. Did girls tell their mothers things like that?
“May I speak with Desire?”