"I'm not afraid," I heard her whisper. "Kiss me again, Jerry."
But he didn't. Apparently he still stood before her at a distance, fearsome of he knew not what.
"Jerry!" she murmured again, in a little tone of petulance.
"Marcia, we--we should be going on," he muttered.
"Ah, Jerry, not yet," she sighed. "Isn't it wonderful that there's no quarrel between us? Just you and I, Jerry, here, alone, like the first man and woman--alone in the world. There's no man in it but you, no woman but me, we're mated, Jerry, like the birds. Don't you hear them singing? The woods are alive with songs of love. And you, Jerry, you stand there staring at me with those great, timid eyes of yours. Why do you stare at me so? Are you frightened? I think that I am stronger than you. It is love that makes me strong. Come to me, Jerry. Kiss me, again."
"Marcia!" he gasped. And then another silence.
"Aren't you satisfied--with this? The wonder of it."
"But I have no right. I can't explain. It's desecration!"
"Not this, Marcia. A sacrament should be gentle. I want to be gentle in my thoughts of you. But I can't, not now. I could strangle you if you let another man do this, and kill--"
"I love you--when you talk like that. Strangle me if you like, kill me, I'm yours--"
I think that to Marcia, this was the greatest moment of her strange passion. Fear was its dominant motive, Jerry's innocence its inspiration. If he had crushed the breath from her body, I think she would have died rapturously. But Jerry, it seems, tore himself from her and moved some distance away, I think, his head bent into the hollow of his arm, torn between his emotions. I would have given all that I possessed on earth to have caught a glimpse of her face at that moment. Flushed with victory of course--but passion--Bah! I couldn't believe her capable of it. If she had been wholly animal I might have forgiven her everything. But the impression had grown in me with the minutes that all this like everything else she did was false--false penitence, false contrition, false tears, false love and now false passion. She was a mere shell, a beautiful shell in which one hears the faint murmurs of sweet music, echoes of sounds which might have been but were not. These were the sounds that Jerry heard, echoes of some earlier incarnation in which spiritual beauty had been his fetich. And now, he stood apart, broken, miserable.