The girl gave a little cry.
The man flung up his head like one suddenly awakened. He strode across the bit of turf to where the girl stood. He caught up her hand, lying on the low cornice of the wall, and carried it to his mouth.
"Forgive me," he said, "I did not mean to frighten you—I would not for the world frighten you. I love you!"
Words old as the world; old as the first man, the first woman—old as that garden in Asia; inevitably the same since the world began its swinging, poured out over this kissed hand.
"I love you! I love you!" What do the expressions, the sentences, the other words that make a vehicle for these three words matter? They are nothing. These three words are the naked body. All the others are but the garments, the ornaments, the tinsel. These are the only words a woman ever hears. The others, all the others, running before them, following behind them, signifieth nothing. Whether there be wisdom in all the other words, it shall vanish away. Only "I love you" never faileth.
"I love you!" These words are of the divine logos. They are the words into whose keeping the Great Mother has confided the principle of life. They are the words at which the children of men are accustomed to surrender themselves to the will of Nature, which is the will of God. They are words, so old, so potent, so mysterious, that, like certain ancient, fabled formulas, they cannot be uttered without presenting something of their virtue. If a man say these words a woman will listen. Though he say them in jest, in mockery, yet will she listen. Though she do not believe them, though she do not love him, yet will she listen, so great a virtue hath this formula of the oldest magic—this rune of the oldest sorcery.
The girl standing here against the wall of the garden listened. Her body seemed to relax and cling to the wall. For a moment she did not move. For a moment, expanded into the duration of a life, she listened to these words—these old, potent, mysterious words! These words, charged with all the ecstasy of all the men and women who have ever loved, with the destiny of future generations, with the "joy that lieth at the root of life," poured out over her kissed hand.
For this long, potent, delirious moment the girl was merely a wisp of blossom, clinging to these tiles. Her consciousness, her will, her very identity had gone out from her. For this moment she was under the one tremendous dominating impulse of the world. For this moment she was only the eternal woman yielding herself to the eternal call.
Her eyes were wide. Her lips parted, her body relaxed, soft, plastic. Then suddenly, as though they had but stood aside for the passage of some authority above them, her consciousness, her will, her identity poured back into her body. She sprang up. She escaped. She drew back into the angle of the wall. She put her hands to her face, to her hair. Then almost fiercely she thrust them out before her.
"No, no, no," she cried. "You must not say it. I must not hear it. I have decided; and you helped me. You convinced me. Don't you remember that afternoon in the bay of Oban? I did not know what to do. I was undecided then, and I asked you.... No, no; you did not understand that I was asking you—you did not understand; but I was; I was asking you and you told me. Oh, I could say every word of what you told me. You told me that older persons knew, that one's own impulses were nothing; that one ought to obey—to obey—one's family. Well, I have promised to obey, and I will obey. While he lives, while my uncle lives, I will obey him."