As the boy sat with her, a delicate aroma seemed to flow into him from her. He could almost fix its point of issuance—her tantalizing, tight corsage. It held him firmly, like a soft bond that gives but cannot break.
And as she sat with him, it came to Julia Deering with irresistible force, that here was a sensitive mind which would receive whatever she might choose to grant. It is hard to withstand this feeling—when one is dizzy with being straight—of a great, free depth to fall in. It is the sensation of the weary man before the brink of the precipice—of one whose muscles ache from holding him so long erect. Below, there lies a patch of cool waters and fanning trees. Upon the rock, the sun sears and the shadows cannot live.
A remark of his started her upon that inevitable forward lurch—the giving way to self-confession. And for an hour, Quincy heard, his eyes steadfast, as if he feared that the least movement would break the charm.
She saw him preponderant, as she spoke. And his sight was the tonal of her words. He leaned forward in his chair. His legs huddled beneath him. In one bony, knotted hand—throughout that hour—a cup was held with its remnant of tepid tea. And his lank body stood out, loose and tense, responsive infinitely, yet lost clumsily within his blue serge suit. His face was a little drawn. But his eyes beat the measures as she talked, with the gentle drooping of their lids as a point went home, and with a sudden fire as she left a conclusion for his delicacy. His lips, all of this time, moved also. They would lie parted. And then, he would slowly moisten them with his tongue, purse them, as if to strangle a tell-tale quiver, and once more let them fall faintly away from his control, until again his interest parched them.
What she told him was nothing. What she made him know was fraught with fever. It was as if a burning rod had struck clear through his pretty treasury of cobwebs and scalded them away. Where they had been—gleaming in the sun of his conceit like a fine lacework—remained an emptiness that ached.
Quincy said little in response. The woman smiled at his silence and his lack of judgment.
“I must go now.” He suddenly jumped up.
She also rose. She came beside him. And the mist of her bodice came over him afresh.
“Do—if you wish to,” she said, quite close to him.
He moved toward the door.