"Are you unhappy, dearest?" he asked suddenly.
"Unhappy, Gilbert? With you? How could I be?"
And so daring innocence and wicked desire drove on through the streets of London—innocence a little tarnished, ignorance no longer, but pulsing with youth and the sense of adventure; absolutely unaware that it was playing with a man's soul.
The girl had read widely, but ever with the hunger for beauty, colour, music, the sterile, delicate emotions of others. One of the huge facts of life, the central, underlying fact of all the Romance, all the Poetry on which she was fed, had come to her at last and she did not recognise it.
Gilbert had held her in his arms and had kissed her. It was pleasant to be kissed and adored. It wasn't right—that she knew very well. Ethel would be horrified, if she knew. All sorts of proper, steady, ordinary people would be horrified, if they knew. But they didn't and never would! And Gilbert wanted to kiss her so badly. She had known it all the time. Why shouldn't he, poor boy, if it made him happy? He was so kind and so charming. He was a magician with the key of fairyland.
He made love beautifully! This was the Dance of the Hours!
The cab stopped in front of the Empire. Led by a little page-boy who sprung up from somewhere, they passed through the slowly-moving tide of men and women in the promenade to their box.
For a little space Rita said nothing.
She settled herself in her chair and leaned upon the cushioned ledge of the box, gazing at the huge crowded theatre and at the shifting maze of colour upon the stage. She had removed the long glove from her right hand and her chin was supported by one white rounded arm. A very fair young Sybil she seemed, lost in the vague, empty spaces of maiden thought.
Gilbert began to tell her about the dancers and to explain the ballet. She had never seen anything like it before, and he pointed out its beauty, what a marvellous poem it really was; music, movement, and colour built up by almost incredible labour into one stupendous whole. A dozen minor geniuses, each one a poet in his or her way, had been at work upon this triumphant shifting beauty, evanescent and lovely as a dream painted upon the sable curtains of sleep.