He seized her convulsively, held her in a cruelly fast grip, covering her cheeks, her brow, her mouth with kisses, violent and tender in turns. At last, pressing his face against hers, he rested motionless. She felt the influence of the contact spread itself slowly throughout her entire frame, subtle and concentrated as electricity, and under its power her breast heaved, and she breathed only in short troubled gasps. The whole room, the whole world, seemed to be throbbing, to be trembling—perhaps it was only the arms that enfolded her that quivered—she neither knew nor cared to know.
A deep silence held sway. The only moment's speech was when Geoffrey murmured a sudden question about their marriage, begging, imploring for an early date. It should be quite soon, Evarne promised. It should be within six weeks, five weeks, a month, less still, if he so desired.
She had hesitated perceptibly before she answered. This definite and verbal plighting of her troth was opposed—actively, violently—for a few moments, by the resurrection of those scruples she fancied had faded away once and for all—false and misleading will-o'-the-wisps of chivalrous truth and honour, leading the unwise into bogs of wild despair and utter misery. When at last she did speak it was in a voice fraught with tremulous emotion, low, yet inexpressibly thrilling—notes softer than the cooing of wood-doves, and which reverberated upon the young artist's highly-strung nerves with subtle emphasis.
More than once Evarne had thought that his nature now was not unlike what her own had been originally, before three years of constant effort to please a jaded, middle-aged man, added to unbroken association with coarse, depraved minds, had sullied her soul, blunted her finer susceptibilities, ruined her taste for the more delicate viands of love's feast. Once upon a time she had sought with all her strength to keep the affection that was offered her free from all savour of passion; now, when devotion, as poetical, refined and idealistic as imagination could devise had been laid at her feet, she had felt starved, chilled, unsatisfied.
But as she looked into her dreamer's altered face and saw its new expression, saw the grey eyes so strangely gleaming, the slight occasional twitching of his lips, the distinct though almost imperceptible veil of moisture that covered his brow, she felt for a moment strangely degraded—curiously identical with the early Christian Fathers' estimate of women. A moment's bitter regret of her own personality cast its shadow. Geoff was too good for her. Ought he not to love a young, innocent girl—one of those sweet maidens who are to be found here and there even in this grimy world, with thoughts white as snow-drifts, and surely invisible halos around their meek downcast heads—pure spirits that were scarcely conscious of possessing bodies, and would assuredly never miss them? Ought not one of these to have been Geoff's bright particular star?
"Are you certain you love me; that you're not deceiving yourself?" she asked again and again, and each time the only response was a long kiss that penetrated to her heart's core; a speaking, all-answering gaze; a closer, almost frantic tightening of the arms in which she reclined.
And her moods changed as a kaleidoscope. Suddenly she laughed aloud in triumphant satisfaction at herself, all that she was, all that she could be. Of course Geoff loved her, and he should love her yet more. Placid snow-maidens—you must be content to shine in heaven; not yours is it to make men thank God for life!
Now to the man who loved her Evarne appeared the very acme of all perfection. And indeed, in that hour she verily was all that is most appealing—most adorable—most exquisite. Her beauty was transcendent, and her expression remained more noble, more respect-compelling than she knew. And yet, all the while, her soft brown eyes, whether swimming in happy, purposeless tears or shining with inward fire, told, with more convincing eloquence than lies within the power of speech, of the utter abandonment of the soul they mirrored to the domination of the most ardent and enthralling affection. She was all tenderness, passion, charm, fascination. Her powerful magnetism encircled her as an invisible cloud. Who, amid mortals, coming within the radius of its influence, could have saved himself from worshipping this fair woman to the very uttermost limits of his capacity?
The stress of her own emotion was exhausting; a delicious languor, a placid dreaminess, tinged with melancholy; crept upon her. She felt incapable of further movement or speech, and allowed her long-fringed lids to veil her eyes. When she lifted them again it was to behold her lover's gaze fixed upon her in a fresh access of passionate adoration that could not be left unanswered. She smiled up at him, a gentle little smile; it seemed serene and calm, but behind it, like unto a powerful naked figure veiled in gauze, gleamed love that was resolute, indomitable, heroic.
Her inarticulate little murmurs, her half-sighs, all her tiny actions had been enchanting, enthralling; but her smile—always sweet and moving—was now provocative of ecstasy. Dazed, unconscious of his own personality, again Geoff knelt before her, his arms clasped around her waist, his face pressed against her soft body. Oblivious to all of life save love alone, he bathed his spirit in this inexhaustible fund of the gods' best gift.