"Don't flatter me—if flattery it can be called. I question whether saintliness in broadcloth is lovable; but I appreciate the compliment the more for its being undeserved."
"Boy, you are frivolous; if you weren't so good I should not have qualms about——"
"Do you know," he interposed abruptly, "how the Orientals prostrate themselves before their divinity? I would do more."
He flung himself on the ground at her feet, his forehead against the earth, and with a quick touch placed his head beneath her heel.
She uttered a sharp cry and stooped to him—to lift him. Had it been Rosser's, she thought, the act would have loomed magnificent; as it was, the combined self-abasement—the devotion, the allegiance of it—was crude and colourless. For her there were no passionate illuminations to preserve the margin of the sublime. She had argued love to be but the shadow cast by ourselves, and at that moment her soul's lamp lighted only conceptions that were blurred, formless, and grotesque.
But as he rose he caught her in his arms, and she did not resist them. She lay inert, like a wounded animal after long strife, and pleaded as though for physical or mental refuge.
"Make me love you! Make me love you!"
And so he kissed her.
It was a kiss that might have awakened a statue to tenderness. The wine of her lips, as he pressed and bruised and crushed them, intoxicated him. He forgot Rosser.