that went, we were engaged, and
I might have put our relations on a far more intimate and familiar
footing than they were now. I might have kissed her, twisted and
untwisted that great cable of hair, put my arm round her waist, and so
on and so on. No one would have objected since we were fiances and, in
addition, cousins. And it is difficult to define exactly the impulse
that had prompted me to abstain from all of these things. Partly it was
an impulse in her defence, and partly in my own. I felt that it was
difficult enough, hard enough, to keep in perfect control my own
passionate impulses when I was with her, even now, while there was the
screen and shield between us of her abstracted calm; when there was a
certain coldness and reserve around her; when there was no beginning,
no opening, no invitation of demonstration; when her complete
unconsciousness of herself helped me to restrain and conceal all my own
feelings; but if this were dispelled; if she came to greet me with the
bright conscious flush of passion; if I saw reflected in her eyes the
fire that burnt in me; if I were permitted to take her into my arms and
cheat myself for a single illusive instant with the thought that she
was mine--what would it all mean? Only giving a sharper, more cutting
edge to the bit in my mouth and rousing in her a hunger I could not
satisfy. She was at present devoted to her art with a devotion that
left her practically indifferent to everything else, and there was a
thin frame of ice round her, which her abstraction and her ceaseless
work built up; but I was convinced that the smouldering fire of a
woman's nature lay underneath--that it was concealed never cheated me
for an instant into the belief it was not existent. She was
pure--perfectly, absolutely immaculate; but there was another power
within and transfused throughout her innocence that swayed and subdued
my will as innocence alone could never do. She reminded me of some
exquisite, delicate porcelain flagon filled with sparkling wine, that
sends its hot crimson glow through the snowy transparent tints of its
circling walls. The wine within lies, at present, in glowing
tranquillity, unshaken and unstirred, and the beauty and the purity of
the flagon grows upon one as one looks. One would hesitate certainly to
stretch an unclean hand to lift it, hesitate to touch it with lips that
were not pure--but as certainly one sees that, if hand and lip are
clean, and one may raise it