It was a girl, old enough to
realise that the adoration she had given was not wholly spiritual, that
her delight in her lover and her response to him was not wholly of the
mind, not so purely of the intellect; that there was still more,
something sweeter, more painful, more bewildering that she could give
him, desired to give--nay, that she could not withhold even with sealed
eyes and arms outstretched in the darkness of wakeful hours, with her
young heart straining in her breast and her set lips crushing back the
unuttered cry.
Love! So that was it!--the need, the pain, the bewilderment, the hot
sleeplessness, the mad audacity of a blessed dream, the flushed
awakening, stunned rapture--and then the gray truth, bleaching the rose
tints from the fading tapestries of slumberland, leaving her flung
across her pillows, staring at daybreak.
* * * * *
Nina had laid a cool smooth hand across her forehead, pushing back the
hair--a light caress, sensitive as an unasked question.
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