The heat in the room made May cold. Paul's hot face against her cheek burnt like ice. She was dead already, shriveled in the cold heat. She pushed at him feebly. She could scarcely hear her own words that told him to stop. They were just a low buzzing from her cold dead lips. Paul was making her aware of herself, of her body that she did not know, that now she could never forget.
He was crying. It astonished her that he was crying, but she felt nothing except a cold burning sensation that came from the warmth of his tears slipping across her face. She was surprised that he cried so silently. Now he lay still against her with his face in her hair. His stillness was too deep. She could not bear it. Her body was cramped and stiff. She felt his heart beating against her like an echo of her own, and above it she heard the clicking of the traveling clock on Aunt Julia's desk, and the creaks of the woodwork on the stairway and in the hall.
If somebody came she would lie there forever. She was dead. She wanted to think she was dead.
But nobody came.
She shut her eyes again, and after what seemed a long time she knew that Paul was getting up and going away from her. She closed her eyes tighter so that she might not see him.
When he tip-toed across the room he made the floor shake. May's shut eyes with the sun on them were sightless flaming lead under her lids. She turned a little and hid her face in a pillow, wondering where Paul was, waiting for him to go so that she could bear it. All at once she knew that he had come out of somewhere and was standing beside her in the light looking down.
He leaned over and whispered, "Get up, May! Somebody 'ull come in and find you lying there!"
His voice was frightened. She wondered why he was afraid. It made her sick with his fright. He added, "I love you."
When he said, "I love you," she was, without explaining it to herself, ashamed for him. She did not answer. She was conscious of his stealthiness. It oppressed her. She would not let him see her face. When the floor shook again she knew he was going out. She waited to hear his footsteps on the stairs and the slam of the front door. Then she pushed herself to her elbow and glanced about. In her new body she was strange with herself. She stood up and smoothed her rumpled dress quickly and guiltily. Then she ran out of the room and upstairs to her own garret.
When the door was locked she threw herself on the bed on her face. The darkness of the pillow was cool to her eyes and to her whole soul. She wanted her throbbing body to lie still in the cool dark. She felt that she was ugly and terrible in her disgrace. She wanted to ask Paul to forgive her because she had behaved as she had. Sobbing into the bedclothes, she kept murmuring to herself, "I love him! I love him! Oh, I love him!"