For ages the transport seemed to endure, the little world of his senses whirling madly through an illimitable space of sensuous light, his lips melting upon hers, his neck bending in the circle of pulsing warmth that her soft arms wove about it, his own arms crushing to his breast with frenzied fervour the whole yielding splendour of her womanhood. A moment so, then he fell back upon the couch, all his body quivering under the ecstasy from her parted lips, his triumphant senses rioting insolently through the gray, cold garden of his vows.
She drew a little back, her hands resting on his shoulders, and he saw again the firelight shining in her eyes and upon her lips. Yet the eyes were now lighted with a strange, sad reluctance, even while the mutinous lips opened their inciting welcome.
He was floating—floating midway between a cold, bleak heaven of denial and a luring hell of consent; floating recklessly, as if careless to which his soul should go.
His gaze was once more upon her face, and now, in a curiously cool little second of observation, he saw mirrored there the same conflicting duality that he knew raged within himself. In her eyes glowed the pure flame of fear and protest—but on her mad lips was the curl of provocation. And as the man in him had waited carelessly, in a sensuous luxury of unconcern, for his soul to go where it might—far up or far down—so now the woman waited before him in an incurious, unbiassed calm—the clear eyes with their grave, stern “No!”—the parted lips all but shuddering out their “Yes!”
Still he looked and still the leaning woman waited—waited to welcome with impartial fervour the angel or the devil that might come forth.
And then, as he lay so, there started with electric quickness, from some sudden coldness of recollection, the image of Prue. Sharp and vivid it shone from this chill of truth like a glittering star from the clean winter sky outside. Prue was before him with the tender blue of her eyes and the fleecy gold of her hair and her joy of a child—her little figure shrugging and nestling in his arms in happy faith—calling as she had called to him that morning—“Joel—Joel—Joel!”
He shivered in this flood of cold, relentless light, yet unflinchingly did he keep his face turned full upon the truth it revealed.
And this was now more than the image of the sweetheart he had sworn to cherish—it was also the image of himself vowed to his great mission. He knew that upon neither of these could he suffer a blemish to come if he would not be forever in agony. With appalling clearness the thing was lined out before him.
The woman at his side stirred and his eyes were again upon her. At once she saw the truth in them. Her parted lips came together in a straight line, shutting the red fulness determinedly in. Then there shone from her eyes a glad, sweet welcome to the angel that had issued.
His arms seemed to sicken, falling limply from her. She arose without speaking, and busied herself a little apart, her back to him.