I want you to promise me that."
She lay back in the easy chair, burying her light head and polished
white shoulder in the velvet cushion, and swinging one little foot
idly as she looked up smiling for her answer. The bright light in
the room fell full upon her, and I looked down upon this brilliant
piece of life, full of glowing tints and warm pulses and subtle
powers, and my brain flamed with the pleasure of the senses. I
hardly noted her words.
"Dear little girl!" I said, smiling back into her eyes. "I refuse to
think of such things at all!"
"Oh, well, it doesn't matter! I don't expect you would," she said,
laughing, the colour leaping up in her cheeks, and the vivid blue
deepening behind her lashes. "Come and make much of me now while you
have got me."
Her whole face and form were instinct with a delicious invitation,
and I bent down to and over her, filled with the delight of the
moment. We made one chair do for both of us, and looked through the
window at intervals to escape each other's eyes, and laughed at
nothing, and talked a very extraordinary astronomy. At last, with
her soft fingers in my hair and on my throat, and her white arm
above the elbow clasped in my hand, speech, even laughter, grew
choked in dense feelings for all the command I kept upon myself; and
we sat in silence, hearing each other's breath, feeling each pulse
that beat in the other's throat and breast.
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