He would stop his pacing
and, half shy each time at first, drop his arm around her and find
her kiss.
She was fascinating, he told her. He had never met any one like her
before. He besought her jauntily but earnestly to send him away; he
didn't want to fall in love. He wasn't coming to see her any
more--already she had haunted too many of his ways.
What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor
sorrow--only this deep delight in being with her that colored the
banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing
seem wise. He _would_ come back--eternally. He should have known!
"This is all. It's been very rare to have known you, very strange and
wonderful. But this wouldn't do--and wouldn't last." As he spoke there
was in his heart that tremulousness that we take for sincerity in
ourselves.
Afterward he remembered one reply of hers to something he had asked her.
He remembered it in this form--perhaps he had unconsciously arranged and
polished it:
"A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically
without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress."
As always when he was with her she seemed to grow gradually older until
at the end ruminations too deep for words would be wintering in
her eyes.
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