XII
She had said nine o'clock, but it was not quite half past eight, the next evening but one, when she appeared at the edge of the clearing. He was seated in the entrance to the upper story, his gaze fixed on the opening in the trees where the path emerged. At first glimpse of her in the long dark cloak, he flung away his cigarette and rushed toward her. He embraced her, then held her off as if to reassure himself that it was really she. "Do you still love me?" he asked. "Are you sure?"
The emerald eyes flashed up at him. Her face, revealed in the starlight, was gravely earnest and sweet. But beneath her calm, as beneath his, there was evidently still raging the hysteria that had whirled both clean out of the realm of sanity and sense—the fever that keeps whirling the soul it seizes from pinnacle to abyss and back again. "Ever since we separated," said she, "I've been imagining I was struggling to give up our love. But as the time for me to come got nearer and nearer, I realized what a fraud I was."
"Do you love me?"
"I am here."
They sat side by side in the entrance. "May I smoke?" he asked.
"Do." As he opened his cigarette case, "Let me have one."
"I didn't know you smoked."
"Oh—a little—at college. We girls used to do it, for the sensation of being devilish. Wouldn't you like me to smoke?"
"If you wish to."