Chiquita floated down, closer than ever before.
She had undoubtedly just waked up. The dew of dreams still lay on her luscious lips and in her great black eyes. Scarlet flowers, flat-petaled, black-stamened, wreathed her dusky hair. Scarlet bands outlined her dusky shoulders. Scarlet streamers trailed in her wake. Never had she seemed more lazy and languid, more velvety and voluptuous, more colorful and sumptuous.
Frank stared and stared. Then, following an inexplicable impulse, he whistled as he had heard Honey whistle; and called as he had heard Honey call, the plaintive, entreating note of the mating male bird.
The same look which had come into Lulu’s face came into Chiquita’s, a look of wonder and alarm and—. She trembled, but she sank slowly, head foremost like a diver.
Frank continued softly to call and whistle. After an interval, another mysterious instinct impelled him to stop. Chiquita’s lips moved; from them came answering sound, faint, breathy, scarcely voiced but exquisitely musical, exquisitely feminine, the call of the mating female bird.
When she stopped, Frank took it up. He raised his hand to her gently. As if that gave her confidence, she floated nearer, so close that he could have touched her. But some new wisdom taught him not to do that. She sank lower and lower until she was just above him. Frank did not move—nor speak now. She fluttered and continued to sink. Now he could look straight into her eyes. Frank had never really looked into a woman’s eyes before. The depth of Chiquita’s was immeasurable. There were dreams on the surface. But his gaze pierced through the dreams, through layer on layer of purple black, to where stars lay. Some emotion that constantly grew in her seemed to melt and fuse all these layers; but the stars still held their shine.
Slowly still, but as though at the urge of a compelled abandon, Chiquita sank lower and lower. Nearer she came and nearer. The pollen from the flowers at her breast sifted on to his face. Now their eyes were level. And now—.
She kissed him.
Billy, Ralph, and Pete sat on the sand bantering Honey, who had returned in radiant spirits from his walk.
“Here comes old Frank,” Billy said. “He’s running. But he’s staggering. By George, I should think he was drunk.”