"I have a worshipful reverence for virginity," he said at length, "even if it be only of a white linen suit. I have always wanted the first and best of everything. It is this entirely fresh and unspoiled quality of your beauty that has so attracted me."
We were walking out through the long French window which opens on to the balcony, and as we gained the shadow of a thick growth of vines at one side he stopped, putting up his arm to stop me.
"Ann," he said, with the same sudden directness that had startled me that day in the orchard when he had asked me about our first meeting, "Ann, you have seen that—I am attracted? Dear, I don't want to frighten you, you beautiful little young thing," here he lost his self-possession, "but I love you, sweetheart—love only you—love you—you!"
His arms slipped about me, and tightening their clasp after a moment, he drew me very close, so close that his perfect face closed everything else on earth from my view. And his keen gray eyes became two points of steel that pierced through, straight to my soul, and carried with them a sweet potion that inoculated my being with adoration for him.
I felt his cheek brush close to mine, his thin, cold face transfigured; and, as if to prolong the exquisite torture of suspense, we both held apart a moment before our lips met full. Then—
I was so swept by the storm of strange and wonderful emotion that my senses failed to take it in at first—that Richard Chalmers was mine! He loved me; he was feeling the same joy and the same torture that were running like fire and wine to my brain. Even in the dim light my eyes must have betrayed some of this bewilderment to him, if his own thoughts had not been equally in a tumult.
"You are sure?" he questioned, after his passionate breath had slackened a little so that he could speak. "Ann, this means everything to me. Don't let me kiss you like that again unless you are very sure of your own mind."
—But he kissed me again, and kissed—and kissed until his lips grew cold, and I felt suddenly so tired that I could stand up no longer.
Oh, divine rapture of senses and soul! Could I forget that kiss in the hour of death? I wished that death might come then, as we stood together in that first passionate embrace, our lips meeting in kisses of fire, our hearts throbbing in physical pain. Oh, to die thus—together! So perfect was the moment—so supreme the joy!
My head fell over, with a little droop of utter weariness upon his shoulder, and his arms loosened.