A regal man, now at his ease in his home, in the negligee
of a moire braided jacket. There is someone else just come into the
room. The clear blue of the eyes is questioning. Can this someone else
be I? What folly! Yet, if I can see this meditative man, why should
he not see me? What a vague mass is the newcomer. I feel, rather than
know it for another man. If I look square for this new presence, I
shall lose the master of the room.--_Watch the master close!_ The sharp
question in his eyes hardens at this other in the room, as at some
ominous intruder. Immobile his face: he reaches out a hand. His eyes
do not lower to what is in his hand. I feel his hand flex and relax and
drop what was in it. Only his eyes are clear, gazing at this other in
the room: and yet straight at me, as if they gazed at me! The eyes fill
with bitterness, with horror that grows fixed and leaves his eyes.... They die in resignation ... and their horror creeps now over my own
flesh. His hands fly above his head: so very empty, so very white and
tremulous his hands. A knife in his breast. And all is gone....

       *       *       *       *       *

... Flowing rivers of faces, of lives saying: “We are steadfast, we are
solid,” as they stream and faint. Now, the familiar blank before my
eyes. The normal street ... I smile at my fancy. I laugh aloud, walking
now commonly. I call to my relief my easy rational knowledge. “No wonder if to-night you suffer from an erratic gush of energy. Hyperæsthesia. Here is Mildred’s house. This confidence ... call it
euphoria, for that talk with your parents was a blow, no doubt. Go
ahead. A mastering passion is right to admit no doubt. Bad names can’t
spoil the splendor of my sureness. Go ahead. Win her. What lies beyond
this radiant mist? _Go on._”

I rang the bell and gave my hat and coat to the calming butler. _d_

That moment with the butler in the hall was like a strip of arid land
parting two seas of my mind. As I went up the stairs, all that had
lived in me, walking through the city, went ... went out, and I lived
whole in the imminent presence of Mildred. If I had asked myself what
I had thought, what I had seen, out there, I could have answered only:
Mildred. But even to have asked the question would have been impossible
to me, since every question and every answer now was Mildred. She opened, closed the door. Mildred is in the room, with her hand
still on the doorknob and her eyes smiling upon me. Mildred I know and
following my eyes I find at last myself, and still find only Mildred. Let her stay there smiling, her slight shoulders faintly straining back
with her arms, and the bare throat pulsant. Let her stay there holding
me in her smile. For when she moves, what will become of me? Her chin
is up: her face is inclined forward so that her violet eyes lie under
the half-shut lids and peer at me. Her chin is a rounded, exquisite
apex, and the cheeks trace triangularly subtle to the brow that is her
chiefest glory. Mildred’s hair is gold, and is banded high, freeing all
her forehead. Let her stay there smiling, holding me in her smile. With her arms’
strain as they clasp the knob behind them, the shoulders are sheer in
the orange gauze of the gown: and the little breasts are high and firm
... very high, and strangely one with the throb of her throat! Mildred comes forward and gives me both her hands. Her arms are thin,
they have no molded beauty. They are like all her body: no sculptured
mass of flesh but a mysterious stream of life swift-running, like white
fire ever within itself, yet fixed upon some pattern immobile and
essenced. “Well,” comes her laughing voice. “You’re early. And you’re out of
breath. If you were late that’d be more excusable. Sit down.”

I sit down, and I stand again. “Mildred, I’m sorry I am out of breath. But I have breath enough to say
what must come first of all this evening ... first of all, all my life. Mildred, I love you.”

Her eyes deepen and grow soft. Her delicate face is a hard fragility
about the brooding thought of her eyes. She sits down. “Come,” she says in a voice that is like her eyes even as before it had
been like her face. “Sit down beside me, John. Here.”

She leads me, holding my hand. When I am beside her on the couch her
hand lifts from mine as if it had been kissed. “You mean,” she said, “that you love me really, John? that you want me
to live with you, John?”

“I want you to be my wife.”

“Does that mean, you are sure you love only me? That you will never
want to live with another woman?”

My eyes gave her my answer: she saw in them, also, my surprise at her
questions. She went blithely on. “Could you love me, John, and also sometimes still love someone else?”

“It might be, Mildred. But in that case I would not now pray as I do,
that you may become my wife.”

She looked down at my hand and her little fist beat on it softly. “How am I to know?”

“Mildred, know what...?”

“If you said to me: ‘Give me a kiss,’ I would kiss you for I feel like
that. If you said to me: ‘Come with me for a week,’ I would say yes,
for I think that for a week I could be sure that I would feel that way
... and if I did not, why a week comes to a close. But no man asks me
that! No man tries to kiss me. They all say: ‘Mildred, I love you. I
shall always love you. I want you for my wife.’ That means forever and
ever. You are all so sure. How can I be sure?”

“Will you give me a kiss, Mildred?”

She leaned forward and her lips were faintly parted. My mouth touched
hers, and my eyes saw within her gown her perfect breasts like
porcelain cups, red-tipped.... She was straight again and smiling. I
hid my face in my arms, fighting to master the storm that her cold lips
had loosed. “John ... did my kiss hurt you, then?”

“No, Mildred. But I suffer. You are so perfect and so brave: and you
feel nothing.”

“That is not so! I liked your kiss.”

“Mildred, beside the anguish and the joy that I feel, you feel nothing.”

She held my hand in her two palms. “Tell me what to do.”

“Believe in me, Mildred.”

“Why, I do believe in you!”

“Above all else ... above all others.”

“Why? Why must it be only you?”

“Because that is love, Mildred. Because I could not bear it any other
way. Because the death of not having you would be as nothing beside
the death of sharing you even with another’s thought. Because only in
the unity, in the solitary oneness of two souls can love live.”

Mildred shook her head, and her gold curls rang about her ears. “You talk like someone else. Yes,” she faced me, “someone who loves
me, too, and wants me whole and for always and can’t bear any other
eyes but his own looking upon me. Someone else whose wishes I’d obey
reasonably, John, as I obeyed yours, when you said: ‘Give me a kiss.’”
Her eyes were cool and happy despite their problem. “But he doesn’t ask
reasonable things. He wants me forever and ever. How can I promise him
that?