“I had no right to behave like that!” she cried. “I was afraid—I couldn’t control myself. But oh, Thyrsis, I love you!”
And she pressed herself upon him convulsively; she was troubled no longer. “Yes!” she panted. “Yes! I don’t mind it any more! I am yours! I am yours! You may do whatever you please to me, Thyrsis—I love you!”
She covered him with kisses—his face, his neck, his body. She drew him down to her again, whispering in ecstasy, “My husband!”
He was lost in amazement. Could this be Corydon, the gentle and shrinking? No, she was gone; and in her stead this creature of desire—tumultuous and abandoned! She was like some passion-goddess out of the East, shameless and terrible and destroying! She was like a tigress of the jungle, calling in the night for its mate. She locked him fast in her arms—she was swept away in a whirlwind of emotion, as he had been swept before. And all her being rose up in one song of exultation—“Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!”
“Ah, Thyrsis!” she cried. “My Thyrsis! I belong to you now! You can never escape me now! You can never leave me—my love, my love!”
And as Thyrsis listened to this song, his passion died. Reason awoke again, and a cold fear struck into his heart! What was the meaning of this?
Long hours afterward, as she lay, half-asleep, in his arms, she felt him give a sudden start and shudder.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said—“I just happened to think of something. Something that frightened me.”
“What was it?”