"Good Lord, deliver us! That's a devil's liturgy!" In denial of his categories she held him out her palm. "Oh, you should know me by that right hand! You're supposed to be a trained observer of symptoms and stigmata. You're the one who needs investigation! Do you realize what a risk I am running? Why, I haven't yet heard you speak to a dog, or answer a beggar, or seen you eat a banana, or watch a vaudeville show—and all four are necessary before I really know you."
She bent her head in mock humility and looked up at him from beneath her golden lashes. "You needn't be afraid, Francis; if you tell me what your rules are, I'll obey them. If you really want me to wear magenta, I shall be terribly fond of it, and I shall only think I've been stupid all my life to loathe it, and be so glad to learn. But I hope you don't!"
"If you'll allow me five cents for dessert," he said as seriously, "I'll order bananas, at the risk of losing you for ever."
They had begun now to revel in the piquancy of the situation. Their meetings had, up to this time, seemed fatal in their dramatic sequence, fraught with meaning, working steadily up to the climax in the studio. There had been few scenes between them, but those scenes had been cumulative in feeling. They had played their parts like actors in a play of destiny, a play whose plot had been closely knit and esthetically economical in incident and dialogue, each act developing logically the previous situation. Now that the tension was released, and the reaction had come after an histrionic catastrophe, each looked at the other with new eyes, seeking the living person under the tragic mask.
In this delightful pursuit they came upon such fantastic surprises, such rare coincidences, such lovely similarities of whim and taste and prejudice, and, above all, such a rare harmony in their points of view on life, that their talk was as exciting as if they had just met for the first time. The talk ran on, back and forth, lively with continual revelation. It came out, not in dominating trends of thought, or principled opinions, but in many charming lesser exemplifications of their mutual fastidiousness. She reached for a plate, and his hand was outstretched to give it to her at precisely the same instant—their fingers touched, and their eyes spoke in delighted surprise. He discovered that she, like himself, took no sugar in her coffee, and on that consanguinity of taste an imaginative structure arose, to be destroyed with equal delight when he found that she was resisting a temptation to use cream. She quoted spontaneously a line from Stevenson that, for no reason whatever, he had always loved: "For to my mind one thing is as good as another in this world, and a shoe of a horse will do." She knew his language, he fulfilled her test. Such were their tiny psychological romances at table.
They had reversed the usual order of progression in their friendship, or rather Fate had reversed it for them. Had they become betrothed in the ancient manner without previous knowledge of one another, their position could have been no more alluring and delicate, for, strangers physically and, to an extent, mentally, their intimacy of spirit was as certain and irrevocable as a blood relationship. They played with a series of little embarrassments.
To-day they had changed their characteristic parts; he was timid, as he had never been timid with women. She was bold, as she had never been bold with men. The primitive woman had come to life in her. They were, however, both of that caste which can notice, analyze and discuss the subtleties of such a condition while still enjoying it to the full. It delighted them to glean the nuances and overtones of that harmony. It was a new experience to Granthope to be with one who understood and was sensitive to the secondary and tertiary thrills of delight without having become hyper-refined out of vibration with the primal note of passion. That sharing of the wonderful first fruits with her, mentally as well as physically and spiritually, kept his appetite for her whetted to a keen edge. He could not get enough of her from sight or hearing, and each touch of her hand became a perilously exciting event, a little voyage of poetic adventure.
They were both learning swiftly the art of loving, but, though one goes far in the first sensational lessons, one can not go all the way, no matter how reckless is the attempt. Passion has to be adjusted to tenderness, and affection to experience, or there is discord. For her, perhaps, that love held more of faery, more freshness and delicious abandon, more mystery, for her nerves had never been dulled by contact; but for him there were newer and truer wonders as well. He had taken another degree in sentiment, and the initiation was as marvelous for him, an apprentice, as for her, a neophyte. And, in that sacred, secret lodge, when the time came, she would jump in a single intuitive moment to his level and surpass him.
Already she was tuned to the emotional pitch; she would notice every false move, every mistake in his devotion, as well as if she had been with him past-master in the rites of love. She could already teach him, and already she began to hold him back sensitively, to linger over every transient mood of feeling, every minor phase which women, in that stage between wooing and winning, so care to taste to the last sweet drop. Every reflex, every echo, she would bid him answer to, indefinitely prolonging, now that she was sure of him, the fineness of the reward of her moment, delaying the definite end. He had taught her the rapture of a caress—she would teach him the excitement of a smile, a tone, a gesture.
They lingered long at the table and then went forth into the sun. The cable-car carried them, still bantering, to the gate of the Presidio, and they set out rollicking across the golf-links. The open downs stretched in front of them in long, sweeping lines, like the ground swells of the sea, skirted to the north by groves of cypress and eucalyptus trees. Beyond, to the west, the ground grew sandy as it approached the ocean, and from that direction a sea-breeze sailed, salt and strong. Behind them was Lone Mountain, with its huge cross on top, and from there in a scattering quadrant a multitude of little houses, the outskirts of the city, skirmished towards the park. The turf was hard and smooth as a carpet, burned, here and there, in patches of black, but elsewhere of a pastel green, colored by the hardier weeds that had sustained the drought and fought their way through the matted, sunburned stalks of dry grass.