Now that all had been arranged, a new embarrassment arose between us—a sweet shamefulness. She clung to me, yet she cast down her eyes, her cheeks encrimsoned, not daring to look me in the face. We touched one another shyly and shuddered at the contact. Our hearts were too full for words, our thoughts too primitively intimate to be expressed. The veils had dropped from our eyes. The mystery of mysteries lay exposed. We saw one another, natural in our passions—exiles from society. No artificial restraints stood between us; in our conduct with one another we were free to be governed by our own desires.
A scurry of little feet in the passage. The sound of heavier ones pursuing. We sprang apart. Dorrie entered, running with her arms stretched out towards me. “Catch me, Dante. Don’t let her get me.”
The rueful face of Annie appeared in the doorway; her plump arms covered to the elbows with flour. “If ’ee please, mum,” she said, “it warn’t no fault o’ mine. She nipped out afore I could get a-holt o’ her, while I war a-makin’ o’ the pudden.”
“You’re juth horwid,” cried Dorrie. “Go ’way. I want to thpeak to Dante.”
She scrambled on my knee, clutching tightly to my coat till Annie had vanished. Then she tossed her curls out of her eyes, and told me all that she and Ruthita had done together on the previous evening. While she was talking, I watched Vi, trying to realize the seemingly impossible truth that she had promised herself to me, and would soon be mine. A host of bewildering images rushed through my mind as I gazed into the future. I was amazed at myself that I should feel no fear of the step which we contemplated.
“Old thtupid,” cried Dorrie in an aggrieved voice, “you weren’t lithening.”
She smoothed her baby fingers up and down my face, coaxing me to give her my attention.
“Sorry, little lady, but I must be going. You must tell me all about it some other time.”
“All wite,” she acquiesced contentedly; “it’s a pwomith.”
Vi accompanied me to the door.