And he sat at her side in an equal ague of distance and need.
Finally he took his eyes from the moon and bent his gaze on her. He saw how her shoulders quaked.
"You're cold, you poor, sweet child—you're cold. I'm dying to take you in my arms, but I promised—I promised."
She was afraid to surrender, and afraid to defy the will of the night. The chill shook her with violence again and again till she felt the world rocking, the stone wall wavering. Then she leaned toward him and whispered:
"Kiss me!"
He could hardly believe that he heard, but he caught her to him and sought her lips with his. Immediately she was afraid again. Again she hid the preciousness of her mouth from him, writhed and struggled and twisted her face, hid it in his breast. But now he fought her with gentle ruthlessness, took her cold cheeks in his cold hands, and, holding her face up to the moonlight, kissed her eyes, and her dew-besprent hair and her cheeks, and pressed the first great kiss on her lips. They fled from him no more.
Only a moment she lingered in Elysium, and then she sighed:
"We must go back—we must! I hate to, but there's to-morrow—and the people! What wouldn't they think if they saw us?"
He knew that they would not think the beautiful and holy thoughts that filled his heart and hers, so he consented to climb back from this lowly heaven to the Upper Purgatory.
Her strength was gone, and he had little of his own; but somehow he helped her up. Again and again they paused to rest, and every time he tried to tell her that he was poor, and at each pause found her lips so sweet that he could not speak of so mean a thing as money and the meaner lack of it.