Have you ever been swayed by an impulse that is utterly beyond your control, and before which all other considerations degenerate to such utter insignificance as not to exist at all?
It was such an one that controlled me then.
As she drew me toward the window, and would have directed my gaze through it, her own eyes held unflinchingly to mine, and mine held hers with a compelling power which she did not seek to resist, and could not have controlled, even if she had made the effort.
Whatever it may have been, out there in the street, that had alarmed her, she forgot it, and my arms were around her, her lithe, sinuous, pulsing body was crushed madly against my own, and our lips had met before either of us realized it. We had mutually recognized the strange and overwhelming instinct of love, that had asserted its control over both at the self-same instant. I forgot the world, the flesh and the devil, the czar, Russia, and nihilism, and she forgot even that uppermost terror that was tearing at her heart, in that supreme moment of the rapturous recognition of love.
We were unconscious of the fact that we were standing directly before the window, where we must have been for the moment in full view of persons passing in the street; we had forgotten everything, save each other.
We were both silent; there was no occasion for words; our souls were speaking to each other in a language of their own, God-given and complete, which leaves nothing to be understood, which comprehends all things.
In such supreme moments as that one was, heart speaks to heart with a complete understanding which passeth all human knowledge, and which can be understood only by the two who are most concerned, and by God, who created such impulses.
Presently we were back again beside the low divan. She was seated upon the edge of it, and I was beside her, with one knee on the floor, clasping both her hands in one of mine, while the other still encircled her body, holding her tightly against me in that rhapsody of love which overawes all sense of understanding.
Her head rested lightly upon my shoulder; stray tresses of her hair brushed against my temple and my cheek; her half-parted lips, glowing like newly opened rose-buds, never attained a distance of more than an inch from mine, and for the most part they were together, as lightning conductors of every thrill that pulsed through her being and mine.