“The bell is ringing,” she said at last. “If you don’t go, you’ll get punished.”
“If it’s for your sake, I don’t care.”
She pushed me gently from her. “Go away now. If you get into trouble, you’ll not be able to come back tomorrow.”
She ran down the path with me as far as the hedge. The bell was at its last strokes, swinging slower and slower. At the hedge we halted. I knew what I wanted to do; my whole body ached to take her in my arms and kiss her. But something stronger than will—the habit of restraint—prevented. Some paces away on the other side of the hedge I remembered that I did not even know her name. Without halting I called back to her questioning, and as I ran the answer followed me through the shadows, “Fiesole.”
After the monitors had come up and the lights had been put out, I waited for an hour till all the dormitory was sleeping; then, very stealthily, I edged myself out of bed. Standing upright, I listened to make sure that I was undetected. I stole out into the corridor bare-foot. I feared to dress lest anyone should be aroused. In my long linen night-gown I tiptoed down the corridor, down the stairs, and entered the fifth-form class-room. Throwing up the window I climbed out.
An English summer’s night lay before me in all its silver splendor—huge shadows of trees, scented coolness of the air, and damp smoothness of turf beneath my tread. The exultation of life’s bigness and cleanness came upon me. I knew now that it was right to be proud of the body and to love the body. Oh, why had it been left to a glimpse in the dusk of a young girl’s face to teach me that? At a rush I had become possessed of all the codes of mediaeval chivalry. Every woman, however old or unpleasing, was for Fiesole’s sake most perfect—a person to be worshiped; for in serving her I should be serving Fiesole. What a name to have! How all her perfectness was summed up in the beauty of those full vowel sounds, Fi-es-sol-le.
I trespassed again in the garden. In the quiet of the rose-scented night I entered the summer-house.
Far away the nightingales sang on. There were words to their chanting now and their song was no, longer melancholy. And these were the words as I heard them: “Fiesole—Fiesole—Fiesole. Love in the world. Love in the world. Glad—glad—glad.”