"This is your initiation. Mine was more sordid and revolting with the tiger-hunter. I am your awakener. You think I am everything, because I am older, deeper in the world of love—demanding so much—thinking so much of these things. Remember this—there is no such thing as the triangle among real people. Mark the woman as common-minded who is in doubt between two men whom she knows well. All shuffling and experimenting is the cause of misery in the world. The higher the soul of a man or woman, the more essential is the voice, the hand of one. Any key will fit common locks. As for you—you were held in your work. All the natural fury of you was compressed in the gray and the silence of mere men-things. You were like a sleeping prince, Sir Romney. I but break the enchantment, and look into your face as your eyes open, and say sorrowfully—'No, it is not he,' and pass on."
"Moira Kelvin—you pass on."
"You would not want me to take less than I dream of?"
"But I love you. I never said it before. I have no place to put this great thing—that you have called. It doesn't come back to me. It's got all of me. It leaves me so much less than alive—when you pass on." He smiled at her. "Sounds weak and pleady. I don't mean it that way. I want nothing of pity, of course. Pity, that would be obscene. I'm not making a picture of the heart bereft. This is no doom-song to a gracious lady—only knowing you is an insult to the rest of the world."
Her slim hand darted out to him.
For a moment his voice choked. The touch of her was like a greater self. He was tortured with a vision of what it would mean to have all of this woman—to command her tenderness utterly, her bestowals, the full deep look of woman to man, the night and day presence, the child she dreamed of—this woman lovely as a golden cloud.... He trembled and his head turned away.
Her face came around to his.
"Romney," she whispered. "It isn't nearly so easy as it would be if you were less a man. Oh, don't you see that? I would have had the heart of a girl and pitied you, and thought it love. You're enough to make that—except for the life I learned in England. Now it's the one covenant. Why, the man I want—I'll do the winning. I would bring the fight to him. Nothing could stand between us. I could be saint or wanton. You don't know me. You would not want half of me. You could only want that part of me you are able to command. Perhaps, as that Hunchback said to you, 'We shall meet again.' I feel that you are a big fellow—brave and quiet and generous—that you have the stuff to make a lover. The real lover must be a bit of a mystic and you have that—but not now, and I must go on.... See, how I have stayed—"
Romney stared hard at her a moment, and then beyond. It was all black, a depth of bamboo clumps like a jungle, over her bent left shoulder. He saw his end in that blackness. She was light and power and beauty and art. A group of waiting-girls were playing the vina, behind the lattice by the bank of the river. It was like the slow song of nightingales. The scent of roses passed between them like a spirit hand. Her face was nearer. The warm scent of her was in his nostrils, and power came to him that he had not known at all that day. Romney spoke:
"Don't think of me as holding you. I love you too much for that—how easy to say that after once it is spoken.... I have nothing but praise and gladness to give you. Yes, you have stayed—that I might be with you—that I might have my full chance. I know what you mean by its being worth death—and what a man he would be to command your heart once, even—and live on afterward.... No, I wouldn't hold you. I wouldn't cry out. I would hold you by sheer love for me—but I am not great enough for that. I would cry out if you came to my arms, but they are not magnetic enough. I have had my chance. I know what a woman is. Forgive me if I disagree about there being another—for me. I'm afraid there isn't, because I've known you—"