“You bet it is! A night for the gods—or for lovers.”
He said it in a murmur, his eyes full on hers, and his look wrenched her from her mood. The mask of comradeship was gone. He looked at her 136 hungrily, as might a lover to whom all spiritual heights were denied.
Her sooty lashes fell before this sinister spirit she had evoked, but were raised instantly at the sound of him drawing his body toward her. Inevitably there was a good deal of the young animal in her superbly healthy body. She had been close to nature all day, the riotous passion of spring flowing free in her as in the warm earth herself. But the magic of the mystic hills had lifted her beyond the merely personal. Some sense of grossness in him for the first time seared across her brain. She started up, and her face told him she had taken alarm.
“We must be going,” she cried.
He got to his feet. “No hurry, sweetheart.”
The look in his face startled her. It was new to her in her experience of men. Never before had she met elemental lust.
“You’re near enough,” she cautioned sharply.
He cursed softly his maladroitness.
“I was nearer last night, honey,” he reminded her.
“Last night isn’t to-night.”