“Yes,” she said. “Take it!” and put up her lips. So their mouths met. A thousand tingling darts of fire pierced through her as his lips touched hers.
Her heart was wrung by that first kiss; for an instant it stood still; the blood had left it, and had fled through her like flame; she almost swooned. For first passion is like the wind in the blossoming locust-tree, too sweet to be easily breathed or borne; youth’s first caress is almost an agony. Gabrielle gasped; his lips had burned on hers like a celestial fire. Both shook as love’s consuming flame rushed through them.
As he to her was first, so she to him; each gave the other life’s immaculate gift, the unmeasured, unmeasurable fire of love’s first embrace, that passionate anguish of delicate, uncalculated delight, ardent and boundless.
Their lips hurried to the meeting. How could they delay? Youth and love brook no delays. Yet, as she felt his lips upon her own, she regarded him with a writhen countenance of unqualified terror. Love comes to the maiden spirit with sudden tumult, and strikes it, not as a blithe discovery, or an all-Elysian joy, but as a birth and an agony, from which, if the soul survives, comes unspeakable happiness. His lips sought hers and seeking, met; in the meeting her soul flew out at her mouth.
The world seemed suddenly remote, withdrawn into the depths of uncalculated space. There remained but these two young, love-stunned souls, groping to each other in the garden under the shadow of the great magnolia-trees.
The enchantment of love was upon them. The happy girl lay close upon his heart, and all she said was, “Love me! Love me!” and, “If ever I cease to love you perdition take my soul!” he said. With utter confidence her eyes looked up into his, glowing with a passion that knows no change; and all she said, as she lay against his heart, was, “Love me! Only love me!” That is all a woman asks. Her fingers stroked his yellow hair; the mere touch thrilled her with unspeakable happiness.
Night came, and darkness voyaged the uncharted sky. Overhead the blue dome blazed with the innumerable stars and golden planets heaving up heaven’s arch; the tremulous green lamps of the fireflies filled the earth with twinkling constellations all around them. But the heavens and the earth were as nothing to them: love was there, and he, and she, and the utterly forgotten starlight. And where youth and love are, life, death, good or ill, the bright stars or the black mould, or better or worse, are nothing, and wisdom is of little worth.
They gazed into each other’s eyes with wordless tenderness. Youth has not words, nor waits to find them; age finds words, and nothing else.
Across the city boomed the hour,—at last.
“Oh! I must go!”