There was a pause. And when at last she spoke, the intonation of her voice was tender.
And as she looked at him, with her clear brown eyes, he believed implicitly that it was true. He was not play-acting. His whole being was softened and made tender by her beauty, by the sight of her calm, oval face and quiet color, her hair swept in a wide curve across her forehead, gathered under the smooth skin of her neck. His manhood grew strong through her belief in him. She was the key that would open for him the gate of adventure. He leaned forward, took her hands in his, and the touch of her fingers brought to his lips an immediate avowal.
“It’s quite true, April, every word of it. I shouldn’t have done anything but for you.” Her brown eyes clouded with a mute gratitude. Gently he drew her by the hand towards him, and she made no effort to resist him. “April,” he murmured, “April.”
It was the first real kiss of his life. His mouth did not meet hers as it had met Dolly’s, in a hungry fierceness; he did not hold her in his arms as he had held Dolly; did not press her to him till she was forced, as Dolly had been, to fling her head back and gasp for breath. For an instant April’s cheek was against his and his mouth touched hers: nothing more. But in that cool contact of her lips he found for the first time the romance, poetry, ecstasy, and what you will, of love. And when his arms released her and she leaned back, her hand in his, a deep tenderness remained with them. He said nothing. There was no need for words. They sat silent in face of the mystery they had discovered.
Roland walked home in harmony with himself, with nature; one with the rhythm of life that was made manifest in the changing seasons of the year; the green leaf and the bud; the flower and the fruit; the warm days of harvesting. Hammerton was stretched languid beneath the September sunshine. The sky was blue, a pale blue, that whitened where it was cut by the sharp outline of roof and chimney-stack. The leaves that had been fresh and green in May, but had grown dull in the heat and dust of summer, were once more beautiful. The dirty green had changed to a shriveled, metallic copper. A few mornings of golden mist would break into a day of sultry splendor; then would come the first warning of frost--the chill air at sundown, the gray dawn that held no promise of sunshine. Oh, soon enough the boughs would be leafless, the streets bare and wintersome. But who could be sad on this day of suspended decadence, this afternoon laden with the heavy autumn scents? Were not the year’s decay, the lengthening evenings, part of the eternal law of nature--birth and death, spring and winter, and an awakening after sleep? The falling leaves suggested to him no analogy with the elusive enchantments of the senses.