As a toy to caress, to fondle, she was enchanting. Nature had apparently made her for that and for nothing else. Her extreme youth, her beauty, her joy in love, made her irresistible at such moments. And as I was young, at the height of youth's powers and desires, our relations in that way held a great deal of pleasure for us both.
But that was the limit. Beyond this there was nothing.
That exquisite mental companionship, that sharing of every thought and idea, that constant conversation on all sorts of subjects that interested us both, all this which I had had with Viola, and which filled so perfectly those intervals when the tired senses ask for, and can give, no more pleasure, was completely absent here.
That delight in beauty which is to an artist as much a part of his life as another man's delight in food or wine Viola had shared with me in an intense degree.
And sharing any of the delights of life with one we love enhances them enormously. One can easily imagine a gourmand being dissatisfied with his wife if she resolutely refused to share any of his meals!
Now, as I gazed through the windows of the slow-moving train and saw the long blue lines of the level-topped hills, the deep purple edges of the vast table-lands rising against the amber or the blood red evening skies, I longed for Viola with that inward longing of the soul which nothing but the presence of its own companion can satisfy.
One evening, as I gazed out, the whole prairie was bathed in rose-coloured light that appeared to ripple over it in pink waves. The tall grass, tall as that of an English hay-field, seemed touched with fire; far on every side stretched the open plain, absolutely level, bounded at last in the far distance by that deep purple wall of mountains, flat-topped, level-lined also, against the sky, the great mesas or table-lands of Mexico.
And in this vast expanse of waving grasses and low flowering shrubs, in the pink glow of the evening, stood out two graceful forms, a pair of coyotes, distinct against the sunset behind them. Only these two were visible in all that great lonely plain, and they stood together watching the train go by, their sinuous bodies and low sweeping tails touched and tipped with fire in the ruby light.
How delighted Viola would have been with that scene, I thought regretfully, as the train carried us through it.
When we arrived at the City of Mexico, we drove to the Hotel Iturbide and took a room high up on the third floor, to be well lifted out of the suffocating atmosphere of the streets.