He folded her hands together and held them against his breast. “She will never waken till her lips have kissed a man.”
She peered up at him shyly. Her face quivered. She had a hunted indecision in her eyes. The clamor, as of feet pounding through her body, communicated itself through her hands. She tore them from him. “Don’t touch me.” She ran from him wildly, and did not stop till streets where people lived commenced.
When he had come up with her, she tried to cover her confusion with laughter. “You remember what he said about becoming enchanted? It nearly happened to us.”
“And why not?”
“Because——” She shrugged her shoulders.
In their absence a table had been spread on the terrace and a lamp placed on it as a beacon. By reaching out from where they sat, they could gaze sheer down through the twilight. Night, like a blue vapor, was steaming up from the valley. In the shadows behind, they were vaguely aware that the town had assembled to watch them. Bare feet pattered. A girl laughed. Now and then a mandolin tinkled, and a love-song of Provence drifted up like a perfume flung into the poignant dusk. At intervals the sentinel in the church-tower gave warning how time was forever passing.
“You were afraid of me; that was why you ran.”
She lowered her eyes. “I was more afraid of myself.—Meester Deek, you’ve never tried to understand what sort of a girl I am. Everything that I’ve seen of life, right from the very start, has taught me to be a coward—to believe that the world is bad. Don’t you see how I’d drag you down? It’s because of that—— When I feel anything big and terrible I run from it. It—it seems safer.”
“But you can’t run away forever.” He leant across the table and took her hand. “One day you’ll want those big and terrible things and—and a man to protect you. They won’t come to you then, perhaps.”
She lifted her face and gazed at him. “You mean you wouldn’t wait always? Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t know it, but if I were to go away to-morrow, your waiting would end.”