Acting on an impulse, I went up to him, knelt with one knee upon his, put my hands round his head, wonderfully soft and velvet-like to feel, and then, turning his face up, I gazed into those enchanting, nebulous eyes, and said laughingly:
“Oh! in Heaven’s name, Witold, why must you talk about everything? You know well enough that this is not what you were made for, don’t you? Pray remember that your one strong point is love.”
And then, for the first time, I kissed him upon the lips, not waiting to be kissed by him.
He kissed me back again, but the kiss was cool, brotherly.
“I regret,” he observed, “that you show me so little of your beautiful soul, and refuse to acknowledge mine to be of a kindred nature. Yet I understand so well your dreams of the Arctic plains that you possess, of your grottoes, glimmering green in the Northern Lights; of your boundless and ever peacefully slumbering ocean! I am for ever very near to you....”
“That may be; but I am always very far away from you,” I retorted, with an attempt at pleasantry. Then I whispered in his ear:
“Love my snows: for there are volcanoes seething beneath them.”
At the words, his mouth fastened on to my neck, and he bit into my flesh with a kiss that gave me exquisite pain together with maddening delight.
My eyelids closed, my lips parted; I was about to faint. And I felt his mouth upon mine, and it was most sweet, with the savour of withered roses. And I drank of the crimson wine of his kisses, and it was strong as death.
And the crimson wine inebriated me.