grapes with an impetuous movement. She
turned, looking him full in the face. She was very pale now and her eyes
shone black. She had not foreseen any such sudden climax as all this.

"Don't ... don't spoil it...." she said vehemently, "don't spoil our
pleasant friendship.... I beg of you not to do it."

They stood facing each other, shut alone into the great gold temple of
the woods. Loring's beautiful bold eyes were black also. He, too, was
white. The pent up passion of his worshipping love for her, that had all
the unreasoning fire of a convert's fanaticism, burnt his lips with
words. He had not meant to speak. Five minutes ago nothing had been
further from his thoughts than the outburst, which now shook him with
its violent suddenness.

"You can't stem the high tide with a straw...." he said low and
breathless. "Do what you will with me.... I love you.... I more than
love you.... I worship you.... I adore you.... Break me if you like....
Snap my life in two.... Throw away the broken bits.... But I worship
you.... I worship you!"

He dropped suddenly to his knee on the brown leaves; caught the hem of
her clay-stained skirt to his lips. He was past all self-consciousness.
He had no dread of seeming ridiculous. Indeed it did not occur to him
that he could be ridiculous. Young love has no sense of humour. His
white, intense face looked up at her amazingly beautiful--the face of a
wood-god kindled with awed passion for some skyey deity. And this sheer
beauty of his kept Sophy also from seeing anything absurd in his
kneeling there to kiss the soiled hem of her skirt. Supreme beauty, like
supreme love, is never ridiculous. The gods wept over Icarus tumbling
from his sire's chariot in mid-heaven. They would have tittered had it
been lame Vulcan sprawling after his whirling hammer through the gulfs
of ether. In the few seconds that Sophy stood transfixed, gazing down
into that exalted young face, she understood how the legend of the
moon's white stoop to Endymion had been invented. Not imagination so
much as material beauty had been the source of the Greek myths. The
artist and the poet in her ranged themselves on Loring's side. Her first
impulse of anger was replaced by a sad tenderness. She forgot the Morris
Loring of everyday in this Endymion of a moment. She forgot even that
she had called him like Endymion "in the sulks" only a short while ago.
This youth, with the white flame of worship quivering up from his
heart's