I sat down on the foot of the bed watching her, my heart beating,
every pulse within me throbbing with delight.

Viola did not answer. She did not light the candles, but with the
rustle of falling silk and lace began her undressing.

That night I could not sleep. The window stood open, and the room was
filled with the soft mysterious twilight of the summer night with its
thousand wandering perfumes, its tiny sounds of bats and whirring
wings.

The cherry bloom thrust its long, white, scented arms into the room. I
lay looking towards the white square of the window wide-eyed and
thinking.

A strange elation possessed my brain. I felt happy with a clear
consciousness of feeling happy. One can be happy unconsciously or
consciously.

The first state is like the sensation one has when lying in hot water:
one is warm, but one hardly knows it, so accustomed to the embrace of
the water has the body become.

The other state of conscious happiness is like that of first entering
the bath, when the skin is violently keenly alive to the heat of the
water.

Viola lay beside me motionless, wrapped in a soundless sleep like the
sleep of exhaustion. Not the faintest sound of breathing came from her
closed lips.

The room was so light I could distinctly see the pale circle of her
face and all the undulating lines of her fair hair beside me on the
pillow.

I felt the strange delight of ownership borne in upon me as it had
never been yet.

We had not dared to pass a night together at the studio.

We had only had short afternoons and evenings, hours snatched here and
there, over-clouded by fears of hearing a knock at the door, a
footstep outside.

But this deep solitude, these hours of the night when she _slept_
beside me, all powers, all the armour of our intelligence that we wear
in our waking moments, laid aside, seemed to give her to me more
completely than she had ever given herself before.

And gazing upon her in serene unconsciousness, I felt the intense joy
of possession, a sort of madness of satisfaction vibrating through me,
stamping that hour on my memory for ever.

The next morning we came down late and enjoyed everything with that
keen poignant sense of pleasure that novelty alone can give. To us
coming from a stay of months in town the small sitting-room, the open
casement window, the simple breakfast-table, the loud noise of birds'
voices without, the green glow of the garden seemed delightful, almost
w