"Why, it is only natural—" the man protested.
"No, no, it is not natural. It may kill all this precious love. You may come to hate me as I hated him, and then, then? No," she continued passionately. "Let us not make a ceremony of this. It would be like the other, and I should feel it so always. We will have love, just love, and live so that it makes no difference. You cannot understand!"
Sommers knelt beside her chair.
"Love, love," he repeated. "You shall have it, Alves, as you will—the delirium of love!"
"That is right," she whispered, trembling at his touch. "Talk to me like that. Only more, more. Make my ears ring with it. Your words are so weak!"
"There are no words."
"No, there is not one perfect one in all the thousands!" she uttered, with a low cry. "And they are all alike—all used and common. But this,"—she kissed him, drawing him closer to her beating heart. "This is you and all!"
Thus she taught him the fire of love—so quickly, so surely! From the vague boyish beatitude had sprung this passion, like the opulent blossom out of the infolding bosom of the plant. Her kiss had dissipated his horrid suspicions. Her lips were bond and oath and sacrament.
That night they escaped the world with its fierce cross-purposes, its checker-board scheme. The brutality of human success, the anguish of strife,—what is it when man is shut within the chamber of his joy! Outside the peaceful rain fell ceaselessly, quenching the flame and the smoke and the passion of the city.