She must know the kiss had no such meaning; for, besides, did she
not scorn the soiled 'tie' also? Were not their theories at one in that?
He would be doing her no wrong; it was her own desire. Yet his kiss did
mean more than he could have imagined it meaning a week before. She had
grown to be genuinely desirable. If love tarried, passion was
awake--that dangerous passion, too, to which the intellect has added its
intoxication, and that is, so to say, legitimised by an 'idea.'
Her woman's intuition read the silence and answered to his thought.
'Have no fear,' she said, with the deep deliberation of passion; 'I
love you with my whole life, but I shall never burden you, Narcissus.
Love me as long as you can, I shall be content; and when the end comes,
though another woman takes you, I shall not hinder.'
O great girl-soul! What a poltroon, indeed, was Narcissus beside you at
that moment. You ready to stake your life on the throw, he temporising
and bargaining as over the terms of a lease. Surely, if he could for one
moment have seen himself in the light of your greatness, he had been
crushed beneath the misery of his own meanness. But as yet he had no
such vision; his one thought was, 'She will do it! will she draw back?'
and the feeble warnings he was obliged to utter to keep his own terms,
by assuring his conscience of 'her free-will,' were they not
half-fearfully whispered, and with an inward haste, lest they should
give her pause? 'But the world, my dear--think!' 'It will have cruel
names for thee.
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