“You are wrong, Emma, I am not worthy of madness.”
“Don’t be on your guard, Kahn,” she retorted.
Oscar appeared before her suddenly, barefoot. She stared at him. “What is it?” she at last managed to ask in a faint almost suffocated voice.
“I want to kiss you,” he whispered.
She moved toward him slowly, when, half way, he hurried toward her, seized her hand, kissed it, and went back into the house.
“My God,” she cried out. “He is beginning to think for himself,” and ran in after him.
She remembered how she had talked to him the night before, only the night before. “You must love with an everlasting but a changing love,” and he became restless. “With an everlasting but a changing love.”
“What do you mean by ‘changing’?” His palms were moist, and his feet twitched.
“A love that takes in every detail, every element—that can understand without hating, without distinction, I think.”
“Why do you say, ‘I think’?”