"I suppose you will never tell me why you did that?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I can't tell. I don't know. Something took me."
"Did you think I came just for the rose?"
"I didn't think."
"If I came for the rose, I ought to go. I wish I could. Do you suppose I'll be able to work again now that I've seen you? I've told myself for three days that if I could only see you again I'd be able to stop thinking about you."
She was not looking at him, but in every line of her figure, in every quiver of her lashes, in every breath that she drew, he read the effect of his words. It was as if her whole palpitating loveliness had become the vehicle of an exquisite entreaty. Her soul seemed to him to possess the purity, not of snow, but of flame, and this flame, in whose light nothing evil could live, curved towards him as if blown by a wind. He felt suddenly that he was swept onward by some outside power which was stronger than his will. An enchantment had fallen over him, and at one and the same instant he longed to break the power of the spell and knew that life would cease to be worth living if he were ever to do so. He saw her eyes, like blue flowers in the soft dusk, and the mist of curls on her temples stirred gently in the scented breeze that blew over the garden. All the sweetness of the world was gathered into the little space that she filled. Every impulse of joy he had ever felt—memories of autumn roads, of starlit mountains, of summer fields where bees drifted in golden clouds—all these were packed like honey into that single minute of love. And with the awakening of passion, there came the exaltation, the consciousness of illimitable possibilities which passion brings to the young. Never before had he realized the power that was in him! Never until this instant had he seen his own soul in the making! All the unquenchable faith of youth burned at white heat in the flame which his desire had kindled. He felt himself divided between an invincible brutality and an invincible tenderness. He would have fought with beasts for the sake of the gentle and passive creature beside him, yet he would have died rather than sully the look of angelic goodness with which she regarded him. To have her always gentle, always passive, never reaching out her hand, never descending to his level, but sitting forever aloof and colourless, waiting eternally, patient, beautiful and unwearied, to crown the victory—this was what the conquering male in him demanded.
"I ought to go," he said, so ineffectual was speech to convey the tumult within his brain. "I am keeping you from the others."
She had shrunk back into the dimness beyond the circle of lanterns, and he saw her face like a pale moon under the clustering rose-leaves. Her very breath seemed suspended, and there was a velvet softness in her look and in the gesture of timid protest with which she responded to his halting words. She was putting forth all her woman's power as innocently as the honeysuckle puts forth its fragrance. The white moths whirling in their brief passion over the lantern-flame were not more helpless before the movement of those inscrutable forces which we call Life. A strange stillness surrounded her—as though she were separated by a circle of silence from the dancers beyond the rose-crowned walls of the summer-house—and into this stillness there passed, like an invisible current, the very essence of womanhood. The longing of all the dead women of her race flowed through her into the softness of the spring evening. Things were there which she could know only through her blood—all the mute patience, all the joy that is half fear, all the age-long dissatisfaction with the merely physical end of love—these were in that voiceless entreaty for happiness; and mingled with them, there were the inherited ideals of self-surrender, of service, pity, loyalty, and sacrifice.
"I wish I could help you," she said, and her voice thrilled with the craving to squander herself magnificently in his service.
"You are an angel, and I'm a selfish beast to bring you my troubles."