He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax—as though, against her will—and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and suffering, of creation and life—of the universe itself.
"Janet—aren't you happy?" he said again.
She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.
"I don't know. What I feel doesn't seem like happiness. I can't believe in it, somehow."
"You must believe in it," he said.
"I can't,—perhaps I may, later. You'd better go now," she begged.
"You'll miss your train."
He glanced at the office clock. "Confound it, I have to. Listen! I'll be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine—"
"No, not to-night—I don't want to go—to-night."
"Why not?"
"Not to-night," she repeated.