"Mr. Power, don't make me cry. I don't——"
"I am going away. Do you hear me. I am going away never to see you again. Other men are to have your kisses. Your bosom is to beat on the breasts of other men. My lips shall go unwashed. My heart shall thump in an empty drum. Do you hear me?"
"Don't talk so loud, Mr. Power. Don't look like that. Mr. Power, don't come so near. Please, Mister; please!"
"I am going away, Molly. I told you that, didn't I, just now? I have come to see you for the last time. I have—Molly, all the fires of heaven and hell are lighted in your eyes. You are doomed to live burning men's hopes to ashes. Molly, the breeze is in your hair. It flutters there, as your little soul flutters somewhere in your lovely body. Let me touch your hair once—oh, so softly it shall be. Once."
"Mister!"
"Once."
"Mister!"
She was in his arms. He never remembered how they came together. But all the parched streams of spirit and body were loosed in a flood of waters. He was kissing her lips. He was kissing her eyes. He was kissing her throat. Her hair touched his hair. Her hair was in his mouth, and the sharp taste of it made him mad. He began to kiss her in frenzy, until she ceased to struggle and lay in his arms sobbing and laughing. He crushed her to him. He kissed her mouth again. He kissed her eyes again. Again he kissed her hair. He kissed her brows. He kissed her throat until the red marks rose in the brown skin. He pressed his head against her bosom where her heart struck wildly. He felt her tiny teeth against his lips. He buried his face in her coils of hair. He held her two hands and covered his eyes with them. He kissed their palms. He laid soft kisses in her eyes. He lifted her from the ground. He fell upon his knees and laid her in the grass, and himself fell down beside her. He interlaced her fingers with his. He drew each open hand of hers slowly about his cheek. He lifted her from her grassy bed and pressed her to him. The coarse stems of plants pushed about his face. Great grasshoppers leapt from their beds into the dark. The stars seemed to blink and flash. He pressed his mouth to hers again, and held her there through an eternity. And then he fell down beside her with his face in the grasses, hearing her tiny sobs, and, more tremendous than that, the shrill of the insects, and more tremendous than the chorus of insect voices, the living stillness of the night.
After an age, he raised himself on both hands, lifting his head above the grass stems. She lay close by, her face turned away, and her heavy hair ragged with little leaves and tiny twigs. She was sobbing very quietly. It seemed to Power he and she lay at the bottom of a deep pit whence he and she had tumbled in headlong flight from the stars. Brave boasts fled in wind. Big words gone in sound. "Traitor" seared in red letters across his soul. A harvest to reap from this sowing. What harvest to reap? Would this child learn to love him as he loved her? No. He believed already her little heart beat to other time than his. Well, the draught had proved too bitter for his tasting. He had put down the cup as it touched his lips.
He raised himself to his knees and bent over her. "You must get up, child. It won't do to lie like that. Crying has never mended matters since the world began."