She looked at it, but did not move either her dress or her hand.
“It seems clean enough, Dick,” she said, “except where those old cigarettes have stained your thumb and fingers. Now, I never smoked, and mine are quite white.”
He took the hand—uplifted now—and under pretence of examining it, drew her fingers to his lips and kissed them. Edith did not protest; it seemed that she was in a mood to be made love to by Dick, who, consequently, like a good and experienced general, proceeded to press his advantage. Dropping on his knees before her—an easy movement, for his chair was close, and, like her own, not high—he encircled her with his arm, drew down her golden head and kissed her passionately. “Dick,” she said, “you shouldn’t do that;” but she did not resist, nor was there anger in her voice as on a certain previous occasion.
“Very well,” he whispered, “kiss me once and I will stop.”
She drew her head back, and looked at him with her wonderful blue eyes that seemed to have grown strangely soft.
“If I kissed you, Dick, you know it would mean more than your kissing me,” she murmured.
“Yes, Edith; it would mean what I want it to mean—that you love me and will marry me. So, dearest, kiss me and let us make an end after all these years.”
For a little while she continued to look at him, then she sighed, her breast heaved, and her eyes grew softer and more tender still.
“I suppose it must be so,” she said, “for I never felt towards any man as I do to you,” and bending her head, she kissed him and gently thrust him from her. Dick sank back into his chair and mechanically lit another cigarette. “You soon go back to your old habits, Dick,” she said, watching him. “No, don’t throw it away, for while you smoke you will keep still, and I have something to say. There must be no word of this to anyone, Dick—not for another six months, at least. Do you understand?” He nodded. “It has come about a great deal too soon,” she went on; “but you asked yourself to lunch—not I—and I felt lonely and tired of my own thoughts. Mrs. Ullershaw’s funeral upset me. I hated it, but I had to go. Dick, I am not happy as I ought to be. I feel as if something were coming between us; no, it has always been there, only now it is thicker and higher. Rupert used to talk a great deal about the difference between flesh and spirit, and at the time it bored me, for I didn’t understand him. But I think that I do now. I—the outward I—well, after what has passed—you know, Dick, it’s yours, isn’t it? But the inner I—that which you can’t admire or embrace, remains as far from you as ever, and I’m not sure that it might not learn to hate you yet.”
“It’s rather difficult to separate them, Edith,” he answered unconcernedly, for these subtleties did not greatly alarm him who remembered that he had heard something like them before. “At any rate,” he added, “I am quite content with your outward self,” and he looked at her beauty admiringly, “and must live in hope that the invisible rest of you will decide to follow its lead.”