“Come and play!” he commanded.
“I feel languid and lazy, like a cat in the sun,” she said; “besides, I’m reading.”
“Very well—we’ll play the Petite Suite of Debussy’s and some other tame stuff. Let’s sentimentalize together.”
“Oh, but you’d find out too much about me. We should get too close to each other in that soft, melting music.”
“Is it possible for us to get too close to each other?” he asked, with a laugh that seemed to be half a sneer.
She rose, and together they walked to the piano.
Only those who have played in concerted music know how easy it is for two souls to mingle in sound. They enjoy an intimacy which no passionate avowals, no tender pleadings, and, indeed, no physical contact can provide. Debussy is never entirely innocent: even his gold-fishes swim wantonly in their pool: and the very tender miniatures of the Petite Suite are decadent with faint exhalations of patchouli.
Fallon detested the casual promiscuities of secret lovers—the pressure of hands, the stolen kisses, the entire vocabulary of illicitness. He had the fastidiousness of the gourmet, and as yet his body had tasted nothing of Katya’s delights, save the sharp thrill that eyes can communicate, and the peculiar, ghostly, but sensuous intimacy supplied by music.
Katya’s moon was in its appointed place as the two lovers silently descended the quay at the White Tower and embarked in their little boat. Guy rowed out into the bay. There was no breathing in the air, no ripple on the sea. The stars made magic in the sky, and conspired with the moon to create a feeling of far-off voluptuousness.
Fallon rowed lazily until they were a mile or so from the town, which was visible as a vast congeries of lights—chains of lights, terraces of lights, huge constellations poised in the air, lonely points of flame burning in solitary places.