Carol resigned herself with a happy quiver. She lay in his powerful young arms like a tired child and blinked at him owlishly in the weird moonlight.
“I think, Natie,” she whispered, “I think—I love you more—than I ever dreamed I could love any man—even back in A-higher.”
Her weight began to numb the boy’s limbs. Yet he could not disturb her; she was a wonderful burden.
Hairpins bothered where her head rested against his shoulder. With her left hand she pulled them out. She shook her riotous chestnut tresses free and they fell about her oval face like the bacchanal crown of a Sybarite. The lad bent his head and buried his lips in them.
She was his—his! Such a night would never come again—could never come again—because this was the first. No thrust-and-parry, drooling calf-talk; no bids for sex-interest here.
Youth, nature and night were stripped to their framework. For this were the worlds made and the constellations hung infinitely. For such was a soul given a maid and a man. For this had a cricket sung beneath these old gray boards for a hundred thousand years.
Again the boy’s lips found the girl’s. Her left arm crept up his right shoulder and around his neck. Their lips clung together.
“Oh, Natie!” she whispered. She had no strength.
“Let’s stroll back toward home,” the boy suggested thickly.
The old clock in the tower of the Universalist Church was striking three when they finally reached the Cuttner gate. In another hour the first streaks of warm dawn would bring the summit of Haystack Mountain into sharper silhouette.