Even Forbes felt the change in Persis. Perhaps it was only that her resistance was minutely diminished, or that one of her many fears was removed, one support gone. As a soldier he had sometime felt that slackening of morale across the space between firing-lines. It is then that the military genius orders a charge and turns the enemy's momentary weakness into a panic.
So Forbes charged Persis. In his face gathered a fierce determination. His fingers tightened upon hers, no longer caressingly, but cruelly, till they hurt. He pulled her right hand across him with his right, and thrust his left arm back of her, caught her farther shoulder in the crook of it, and drew her close till their faces almost touched, till her eyes were so close to his that they were grotesquely one.
And then he paused. He lacked the élan to seize the red flag of her lips. He paused weakly to stare at her and to beseech the kiss he might have captured.
"Kiss me!" he said.
So silly a phrase for so warm a deed. She shook her head, and her fright was gone. She taunted him from her eyes as from an unconquered citadel.
"Kiss me!" he repeated, feeling poltroon and idiotic.
She did not upbraid him or feel any anger or any helplessness; she just studied him, ignoring the fact that he held her body close to him in a crushing embrace. After all, that meant nothing. Almost anybody might hold her so at a dance for all the world to see. Nothing mattered, she thought, so long as their souls did not embrace.
But therein she was wrong, for their souls were not dancing to music. He was demanding her love, her submission to his love. Their souls were debating that vital question, without speech, yet with every argument.
She enjoyed the struggle. She was striking the first of the matches. She would watch the pretty blue flame a moment before it blazed red, then she would blow it out with a little breath from the lips he demanded.
It was fascinating to see how tremendously excited he was over the privilege of touching his lips to hers. It was a quaint little act to make so much of. He was a splendid man, brave, charming, good to see, and now he was crimson and fierce-eyed and breathing hard, trembling with the struggle to keep from taking what was so close. She smiled at him triumphantly. She was about to puff out the flame with a whiff of sarcasm, when he said, with all the simplicity of truth: