And how can I promise him what I can’t give him at once?”

“Who is he, Mildred?” I forced the words and they came like gray ghosts
out of my mouth. “Oh, you don’t know him. I’ve known him long. And he’s wonderful, too. Like you are. But different. In every way, different. You don’t,” she
smiled, “encroach on each other at all. He’s big and dark, and rather
slow. And you are wonderfully quick. He is a poet and smells always of
pipe tobacco. His hands are gnarled....”

“He loves you.”

“I think as much as you do, John. His words are strangely like yours,
even though he himself is so different. That is important, is it not? He asked me one reasonable thing ... one thing I could do.”

“What was that, Mildred?”

“To come to his rooms.”

“Mildred!”

“He has a lovely place down on Washington Square. I supposed, when he
had me there, he’d want to kiss me. But no ... he’s unreasonable, just
like you. He frightened me. He left me so alone. I was almost chilly,
I assure you. With his pacing up and down: saying ‘I love you. I want
you. I love you,’ and not even taking my hand.” She reached for mine. “You see,” she smiled, “he is even less reasonable than you. You at
least kissed me.”

I was up from the couch. She had held my hand. I snatched it from
her. I began to pace, till the thought came that _he_ had done this. I stopped and faced her. I pulled her up and held her in my arms. I
covered her face with kisses. I found her throat in my dazed ecstasy;
I pressed my mouth within the gauze of her gown. Her cool hand stopped
me, and she held me off. “No,” she said. “No, I cannot.”

“Why? If you mean what you said. Why?”

Her eyes took on a serious dark question: and I knew how right I was to
love her for the splendor of her chastity. For ere she answered me, she
was seeking deep within her soul the reason, the quiet reason. In that true moment when with head bowed she went within herself to
give me answer why she had denied me, I knew the greatness of my love,
and how she was greater than I, and how my sultry passion had been an
ugly shred tangenting from my love. “Mildred,” I said in her silence, “you will give your answer. But in
your search I can tell you already that you were right; even for my
sake, in the light of my own love, you were right to hold me off. You cannot be taken that way. You cannot be stormed. Mating with you
must be the peaceful meeting of two equal wills. And it must come to
be within a quiet deep and great like itself. There is a passionate
stillness more powerful than any tempest. I shall not kiss you again,
my love, until you know that kiss for the threshold to our life.”

Her eyes were heavy with thinking. They grew bright. “Then you agree, even in that, with Philip!”

I nodded. I could not hate him when his name, whoever he was, lived on
her lips. “And now I can tell you why I pushed you off.”

“Why, Mildred?”

She moved her head slowly from side to side; she sat down; she smoothed
her gown downward from her neck. “I have learned something ... here.” Her hands with a sharp candor,
while her eyes met mine, followed the gauze I had ruffled, and cupped
her breasts. “I care for you, and I care for Philip. I thought that was
enough: that I could blindly let time order ... time and mood ... what
each of you wanted of me, and what I wanted to give. It is not so. Time
counts terribly! Before I can give myself to either of you, I must know
which of you I want to take me first. And then I feel ... I feel, when
I have learned who is first, there may be no second!”

“Mildred, you see that I was right? You have learned what I knew when I
first saw you. Before I saw you I held myself for you. I denied myself. Not only did I know there could be no one beyond you ... none even
before you!”

She was murmuring almost to herself: “It was your mouth on my breast. Your hot mouth marking my flesh, that made me know....”

“You would have hated me, were it not I....”

She shook her head: “Philip might have kissed me. How should I know?”

I smiled. “There is no hurry, dear. Wait. I shall be patient. Wait.”

She hid her face a moment in her hands. And lifting them again, her
eyes laughed hard and strong in her fragile face. “Oh, patience! Bother patience! Why should we wait? Why can’t we know
now? I want to know. If Philip were only here, I’d know soon enough. The others don’t count. Really ... how wonderfully simple when there
are only two. And you call for patience. Timid! I’ll phone for Philip. Yes, I will. If he’s home, I’ll phone and I’ll go over there: or have
him come here quick.... You really should meet him.” Her smile was
above malice. “And I’ll know perhaps, just if I look at him.”

She danced toward the door. There was a knock that stopped her. She
moved slowly, suddenly transfigured, and turned the knob. A maid stood
hesitant. “Miss Fayn, it’s something urgent, Miss. Your father would like to
speak to you just a minute.”

Mildred looked at me. There was a pallor over the bloom of her cheeks. Her eyes still danced, unknowing, within an invading pallor. I was
alone. *       *       *       *       *

A stillness lay within the room that had rung and sung with the dancing
laughter of Mildred. Mildred was gone: and someone else is here! Who
is here, blighting this room? I stand and feel a horror rise from my
loins like a gray cloud ... up, up my sides it crawls: lifting my hair
it passes. I forced myself to look over each shoulder: nothing. It
is gone. What is it that was here and that I have not seen and that I
felt I knew? A foul dark mass in the shrine of Mildred’s room. But the
horror that scudded through me is away. Thoughts come. Good thoughts. Chasing all others.--Mildred is mine, is mine! And she is wonderful
beyond my wonder. ... She opened the door and I shuddered for on her face was the
darkness that had been alone with me. “Oh,” came her voice, reed-like and stripped. “Oh, he is dead.”

I looked my amazed question: knew I was looking it. --Your father? Not your father? “You never saw Philip LaMotte.”

“Never.”

“You will never see him. Nor I, again.”

From within her eyes the shadow came to me and awoke my skin once more
to the familiar horror. “He is dead.”

I was silent. “They telephoned my father. Papa and he were friends. Philip has been
murdered!”

I saw her, saw above all my transcendant need of her like a new
radiance within her body. The bewildered cloud upon her face of sorrow
was an intruder, a foe. --You are mine. All else is trampled out in the march of my love....
She would not have it so. She stood there sorrowing. I took her hand,
and her touch said: “He is murdered.” It was a film, viscous between us. But still I could say nothing. I held her hand: I dared not loose it
just because it said: “He is murdered.” Why should I be downed by that? Whether it helped or no what did it avail against my mastering need? But the touch of her limp hand spoke, spoke again. My clasp fought
vainly, drawing in the foe, in the attempt to shut him out.