It is the part of virginity to flee from passion, and instinctively it fulfils its part as long as passion pursues. If there is any pause in the chase, virginity kindly stops and waits, till passion is ready to take up the pursuit, when it promptly flies again.
So Regina, with her pulses leaping with joy and her feet on air, and seeing the garden about her, all transfigured with a new glory, at the sound of that word in his voice looked away instinctively and seemed not to have heard.
They walked round the green turf, the roses nodding in the gently moving air and throwing their perfume on to it, under the thick wild unpruned tamarisk, that looked like the softest feathers against the glowing sky, under the swaying palms that threw shadow and sunlight alternatively down on them, and then on by those little dark green winding paths where the air was still and warm and dusk laden with the scent of the rose and the vital life-giving salt breath of the sea.
They spoke a little, mostly in praise of the beauty around them, or of the doves flying in circles overhead, or of the wild calling note of the nightingale that came from the thickets, and both were intensely happy in the beauty and proximity of the other and because of the magic steel-like ring that nature was drawing tighter and tighter round them, each moment forcing them towards each other.
As last, before them, through the crossing and re-crossing of delicate lines of branch and leaf, they saw the gleam of purple and the glitter of the sea. Regina quickened her steps a little and reached first the porphyry balustrade and leant over with a little cry of delight as her eyes caught all the radiance gathering in the western sky and all the jewelled light flung on the opposite coast, where peak and headland lay in lines of velvet blue under a golden haze.
"Oh, look how lovely this is," she said, as Everest came and stood beside her. "I have a painting of it that I did on an evening like this. I should like to show it to you."
"Did you paint this?" he said. "It is a difficult subject. What a lot you have learnt in your few short years of life! You seem to know so much, and then to be only eighteen; you are a revelation to me."
A little smile played over her face, irradiated by the mellowing light as she looked up at him.
"I am so glad," she said simply. "I should like to please you. To me you are the most wonderful, beautiful and perfect person I have ever seen."
"Regina." He was very near her now, one arm came round her shoulder. Ah, that touch, how it moved her, the first touch of that being she so admired, how it vibrated through her, body and mind, from head to foot. She recognised the strength and force of the arm, yet how gentle and reverent its contact was with her now. How strange it is that amongst a hundred men who might touch a woman and leave her wood and stone to them there is perhaps just one whose slightest contact may give her that extreme ecstasy!