He clung to her hand. It was now a rescuing hand put out to lift him from the dry well of gloom. He dropped to his knee, and without any coquetry she put her arms around him and huddled him close. His hot cheek knew the ineffable comfort of her silken shoulder; his brow felt her lips upon them. He was at home.
All the strength that had sustained him, all his ideas of duty and honor, were blown away like the down of a dandelion puff by the mere breath of her lips. And now the tears his eyes had refused broke from them in flood. He wept because he was happy and because he had found contentment and refuge. He wept as great heroes and fierce warriors used to weep before tears went out of fashion for men and began to fall into disuse even among women.
Persis mothered him, wondering at his childishness. She did not weep with him. She smiled. She laughed the low, thorough laughter of the victorious Delilah getting her Samson back. She loved him though she betrayed him. She loved the triumph of her beauty, the victory of her soft bosom, over all the hateful inconveniences of law and justice and piety.
By and by he was smiling, too, with shame at his humanity and his return to boyhood, and with the revel of her companionship. She humiliated him deliciously by drying his wet eyelids with her fragrant tiny handkerchief and by the silly baby talk she lavished on him. But it was the only comfortable shame he had felt in the past black days.
And now they were indeed acquainted with each other. She had seen him weep. When a woman has gained that advantage over a man, what dignity has he left? She can make a face at him, and all his pride becomes a laughing-stock.
At length, to avoid the reefs of more important talk, he asked her how she came to be alone, and what all the bundles were for. She explained that she had been shopping betimes for Christmas presents and had been making the things ready for the morrow's American mail; Willie had mutinied and gone vaudevilling; his man had taken the English maid of a neighbor in the hotel to a dance at the Red Mill; and Nichette had refused to miss her soldier's evening out.
Persis made Forbes help her with the remaining packages, and they laughed like youngsters over the knots she tied, and the blots she made, and the things she had bought for all the people she had to buy things for—her father, her mother-in-law, her sister, her sister's children, and an army of servants. When finally the last address was inscribed she felt that she had done enough duty for a month, and voted herself a vacation—also a cigarette. She told Forbes where Willie's cigars were kept, but he made a punctilio of not smoking them, though he had none of his own and would not order any from the hotel.
They talked small talk and love talk; they laughed and cooed. They were congenial to the infinitesimal degree. The world outside was dank and cheerless. They shut it away with great curtains. They forgot that there was any curse upon their rapture. They shut out all their obligations as things clammy and odious.
Nature had selected them for each other. Nature mated them and wooed for them, and did not know or did not care what other plans they had made, what contracts or pledges had been assumed. The true damnation was in the earlier crime: that solemn marriage in the church before the world. The wickedness was begun at the altar: the violation of duty, the breach of the seventh "Thou shalt not." It was there that Persis' feet took hold on hell.
Yet the world had made a jubilee of that occasion. People had put on their best clothes and were proud to be asked to assist. Rather, they should have hidden their eyes from the abomination; they should have resented the request to play accomplice to that indecency. Instead, they celebrated the crime with flowers, and music, and with surplices in a church.