pon her face, in
her eyes and on her lips, was a smile of joy I had never seen before,
though a smile of conquest, and of something more besides that I must
call truly by its rightful name, a smile of lust. God! those
movements beneath the clinging dress that fell in lines of beauty to
her feet! Those little feet that stepped upon my heart, upon my very
soul.... For a moment I loathed myself. The next, as she touched me
and my arms took her with rough strength against my breast, my
repugnance vanished, and I was utterly undone. I believed I loved.
That which was gross in me, leaping like fire to claim her glorious
beauty, met and merged with that similar, devouring flame in her; but
in the merging seemed cunningly transformed into the call of soul to
soul: I forgot the pity.... I kissed her, holding her to me so
fiercely that she scarcely moved. I said a thousand things. I know
not what I said. I loved.

Then, suddenly, she seemed to free herself; she drew away; she looked
at me, standing a moment just beyond my reach, a strange smile on her
lips and in her darkened eyes a nameless expression that held both
joy and pain. For one second I felt that she repelled me, that she
resented my action and my words. Yes, for one brief second she stood
there, like an angel set in judgment over me, and the next we had
come together again, softly, gently, happily; I heard that strange,
deep sigh, already mentioned, half of satisfaction, half, it seemed,
of pain, as she sank down into my arms and found relief in quiet
sobbing on my breast.

And pity then returned. I felt unsure of myself again. This was the love
of the body only; my soul was silent. Yet--somehow, in some strange
hidden way, lay this ambushed meaning--that she had need of me, and that
she offered her devotion and herself in sacrifice.

II

THE brief marriage ran its course, depleting rather than enriching me,
and I know you realized before the hurried, dreadful end that my tie
with yourself was strengthened rather than endangered, and that I took
from you nothing that I might give it to her. That death should
intervene so swiftly, leaving her but an interval of a month between the
altar and the grave, you could foreknow as little as I or she; yet in
that brief space of time you learned that I had robbed you of nothing
that was your precious due, while she as surely realized that the
amazing love she poured so lavishly upon me woke no response--beyond a
deep