And, behold, it was nothing after all. It was just a little girl kissing him.
"Kiss met Kiss me again!" he said savagely. "You must, you must! Rita, my darling, _my darling_!"
She pressed her cool lips to his once more--how cool they were!--almost dutifully, with no revolt from his embrace, but as she might have kissed some girl friend at parting after a day together.
All evil, dominant passions of his nature, hidden and sleeping within him for so long, were awake at last.
He had held Rita in his arms. Yet, whatever she might say or do in her reckless school-girl fashion, she was really absolutely innocent and virgin, untouched by passion, incredibly ignorant of the red flame which burned within him now and which he would fain communicate to her.
"Are you unhappy, dearest?" he asked suddenly.
"Unhappy, Gilbert? With you? How could I be?"
And so daring innocence and wicked desire drove on through the streets of London--innocence a little tarnished, ignorance no longer, but pulsing with youth and the sense of adventure; absolutely unaware that it was playing with a man's soul.
The girl had read widely, but ever with the hunger for beauty, colour, music, the sterile, delicate emotions of others. One of the huge facts of life, the central, underlying fact of all the Romance, all the Poetry on which she was fed, had come to her at last and she did not recognise it.
Gilbert had held her in his arms and had kissed her. It was pleasant to be kissed and adored. It wasn't right--that she knew very well. Ethel would be horrified, if she knew. All sorts of proper, steady, ordinary people would be horrified, if _they_ knew. But they didn't and never would! And Gilbert wanted to kiss her so badly. She had known it all the time. Why shouldn't he, poor boy, if it made him happy? He was so kind and so charming. He was a magician with the key of fairyland.
He made love beautifully! This was the Dance of the Hours!
The cab stopped in front of the Empire. Led by a little page-boy who sprung up from somewhere, they passed through the slowly-moving tide of men and women in the promenade to their box.
She settled herself in her chair and leaned upon the cushioned ledge of the box, gazing at the huge crowded theatre and at the shifting maze of colour upon the stage. She had removed the long glove from her right hand and her chin was supported by one white rounded arm. A very fair young Sybil she seemed, lost in the vague, empty spaces of maiden thought.
