He rose and stood before her. She swayed toward him like a flower bowed by the wind. He put his arms around her, her head lay back, and he kissed the smooth fullness of her throat. He kissed her lips.
The eternal, hapless cry of the whippoorwills throbbed on his hearing. The moon slipped behind a corner of the house, and a wave of darkness swept over them. Lettice began to tremble violently, and he led her back to their place on the veranda’s edge. She was silent, and clung to him with a reluctant eagerness. He kissed her again and again, on a still mouth, but soon her lips answered his desire. It grew constantly darker, the silvery vistas shortened, grew blurred, trees merged into indistinguishable gloom.
Lettice murmured a shy, unaccustomed endearment. Gordon was stereotyped, commonplace; he was certain that even she must recognize the hollowness of his protestations. But she never doubted him; she accepted the dull, leaden note of his spurious passion for the clear ring of unalloyed and fine gold.
Suddenly and unexpectedly she released herself from his arms. “Oh!” she exclaimed, in conscience-stricken tones, “Mrs. Caley’s medicine! I—forgot; she should have had some long ago.” He tried to catch her once more in his embrace, restrain her. “It would be better not to wake her up,” he protested, “sleep’s what sick folks need.” But she continued to evade him. Mrs. Caley must have her medicine. The doctor had said that it was important. “It’s my duty, Gordon,” she told him, “and you would want me to do that.”
He stifled with difficulty an impatient exclamation. “Then will you come back?” he queried. He took her once more close in his arms. “Come back,” he whispered hotly in her ear.
“But, dear Gordon, it is so late.”
“What does that matter? don’t you love me? You said you were the sort of a girl to give all; and now, because it is a little late, you are afraid. What are you afraid of? Tell me that! You know I love you; we belong to each other; what does it matter how late it is? Beside, no one will know, no one is here to spy on us. Come back, my little girl ... my little Lettice; come back to a lonely man with nothing else in the world but you. I’ll come in with you, wait inside.”
“No,” she sobbed, “wait ... here. I will see ... the medicine. Wait here for me, I will come back. It doesn’t matter how late it is, nothing matters ... trust in you. Love makes everything good. Only you love me, oh, truly?”
“Truly,” he reassured her. “Don’t be long; and, remember, shut Mrs. Caley’s door.”
She left him abruptly, and, standing alone in the dark, he cursed himself for a fool for letting her go—a boy’s trick. But then the whole affair did not desperately engage him. He sat in the comfortable chair, and lit a cigarette, shielding it with his hand so that she would not see it, recognize in its triviality his detachment. A wave of weariness swept over him; the night was like a blanket on the land. Minutes passed without her return; soon he would go in search of her; he would find her ... in the dark house.... He shut his eyes for a moment, and opened them with an effort. The whippoorwills never for a moment ceased their melancholy calling; they seemed to draw nearer to him; then retreat, far away. His head fell forward upon his breast.