e would
always let him kiss her as much as he liked, although she could not
quite see what pleasure he found in it. Yet, could she not? Of course it
was beautiful to be held close by Richard Yaverland! His substance was
so dear, that his very warmth excited her tenderness and the rhythm of
his breathing made wetness dwell about her lashes; it was most foolish
that she should feel about this great oak-strong man as if he were a
little helpless thing that could lie in the crook of her arm, like an
ailing puppy; or perhaps a baby.

A pervading weakness fell on her; her arms, which had somehow become
linked round his neck, were now as soft as garlands, her knees failed
under her shivering body; but through her mind thundered grandiose
convictions of new power. There was no sea, however black with chill and
depth, in which she would not dive to save him, no desert whose
unwatered sands she would not travel if so she served his need. It was
as if already some brown arm had thrown a spear and she had flung
herself before him and blissfully received the flying steel into her
happy flesh. Love began to travel over her body, lighting here and there
little fires of ecstasy, making her adore him with her skin as she had
always adored him with her heart. And as the life of her nerves became
more and more intense, her sensations more and more luminous, she became
less conscious of her materiality. At the end she felt like a flash of
lightning. From that moment she sank confused into the warm darkness of
his embrace, while above her his voice muttered hesitant with solemnity:
"Ellen ... you are the answer ... to everything...."

They drew apart and stood far off, looking into each other's eyes. The
clock, ticking away time, seemed a curious toy. "You. In this little
room. Oh, Ellen, it is a miracle," he said.

Pressing her hands together beneath her chin, she smiled.

"Ah, you are so beautiful! Your hair. Your eyes. The little white ball
of your chin. As a matter of hard fact, you are more beautiful than I've
ever imagined anybody else to be. The wildest lies I've ever told myself
about the women I've wanted to love are true of you." For a moment he
was still, thinking of Mariquita de Rojas as a swimmer might look down
through fathoms of clear water on the face of a drowned woman. "But you
... you are beautiful as ... as an impersonal thing...." He clenched his
fists in exasperation. All his life the one gift he had exercised easil