It seemed I touched
herself that lay beneath it. And at that touch some fire of
lightning ran through every vein. "How stupid of me," I said quickly, making to go past her, "but it's
white, you see, and in this dim light I----"

"A man's idea of an evening frock is always white, I suppose, or
black." She laughed a little. "I'm not coming to dinner to-night,"
she added, sitting down to the harp. "I've got a headache and thought
I might soothe it with a little music. I didn't know any one was
here. I thought I was alone." Thus, deftly, having touched a chord of pity in me, she began to play;
her voice followed; dinner and dressing, the house-party and my
mother's guests, were all forgotten. I remember that you looked in,
your eyes touched with a suggestive and melancholy smile, and as
quickly closed the door again. But even that little warning failed to
help me. I sat down on the sofa facing her, the world forgotten. And,
as I listened to her singing and to the sweet music of the harp, the
spell, it seemed, of some ancient beauty stole upon my spirit. The
sound of her soft voice reduced my resistance to utter impotence. An
aggressive passion took its place. The desire for contact, physical
contact, became a vehement aching that I scarcely could restrain, and
my arms were hungry for her. Shame and repugnance touched me faintly
for a moment, but at once died away again. I listened and I watched. The sensuous beauty of her figure and her movements, swathed in that
soft and clinging serge, troubled my judgment; it seemed, as I saw
her little foot upon the pedal, that I felt with joy its pressure on
my heart and life. Something gross and abandoned stirred in me; I
welcomed her easy power and delighted in it. I feasted my eyes and
ears, the blood rose feverishly to my head. She did not look at me,
yet knew that I looked at her, and how. No longer ashamed, but with a
fiery pleasure in my heart, I spoke at last. Her song had ended. She
softly brushed the strings, her eyes turned downwards. "Marion," I said, agitation making my voice sound unfamiliar, "Marion,
dear, I am enthralled; your voice, your beauty----"

I found no other words; my voice stopped dead; I stood up, trembling
in every limb. I saw her in that instant as a maid of olden time,
singing the love-songs of some far-off day beside her native
instrument, and of a voluptuous beauty there was no withstanding. The
half-light of the dusk set her in a frame of terrible enchantment. And as I spoke her name and rose, she also spoke my own, my Christian
name, and rose as well. I saw her move towards me. Upon her face, in
her eyes and on her lips, was a smile of joy I had never seen before,
though a smile of conquest, and of something more besides that I must
call truly by its rightful name, a smile of lust. God! those
movements beneath the clinging dress that fell in lines of beauty to
her feet! Those little feet that stepped upon my heart, upon my very
soul.... For a moment I loathed myself. The next, as she touched me
and my arms took her with rough strength against my breast, my
repugnance vanished, and I was utterly undone. I believed I loved. That which was gross in me, leaping like fire to claim her glorious
beauty, met and merged with that similar, devouring flame in her; but
in the merging seemed cunningly transformed into the call of soul to
soul: I forgot the pity.... I kissed her, holding her to me so
fiercely that she scarcely moved. I said a thousand things. I know
not what I said. I loved. Then, suddenly, she seemed to free herself; she drew away; she looked
at me, standing a moment just beyond my reach, a strange smile on her
lips and in her darkened eyes a nameless expression that held both
joy and pain. For one second I felt that she repelled me, that she
resented my action and my words. Yes, for one brief second she stood
there, like an angel set in judgment over me, and the next we had
come together again, softly, gently, happily; I heard that strange,
deep sigh, already mentioned, half of satisfaction, half, it seemed,
of pain, as she sank down into my arms and found relief in quiet
sobbing on my breast. And pity then returned. I felt unsure of myself again. This was the love
of the body only; my soul was silent. Yet--somehow, in some strange
hidden way, lay this ambushed meaning--that she had need of me, and that
she offered her devotion and herself in sacrifice. II

THE brief marriage ran its course, depleting rather than enriching me,
and I know you realized before the hurried, dreadful end that my tie
with yourself was strengthened rather than endangered, and that I took
from you nothing that I might give it to her. That death should
intervene so swiftly, leaving her but an interval of a month between the
altar and the grave, you could foreknow as little as I or she; yet in
that brief space of time you learned that I had robbed you of nothing
that was your precious due, while she as surely realized that the
amazing love she poured so lavishly upon me woke no response--beyond a
deep and tender pity, strangely deep and singularly tender I admit, but
assuredly very different from love. Now this, I think, you already know and in some measure understand; but
what you cannot know--since it is a portion of her secret, of that
ambushed meaning, as I termed it, given to me when she lay dying--is the
pathetic truth that her discovery wrought no touch of disenchantment in
her. I think she knew with shame that she had caught me with her lowest
weapon, yet still hoped that the highest in her might complete and
elevate her victory. She knew, at any rate, neither dismay nor
disappointment; of reproach there was no faintest hint. She did not even
once speak of it directly, though her fine, passionate face made me
aware of the position. Of the usual human reaction, that is, there was
no slightest trace; she neither chided nor implored; she did not weep. The exact opposite of what I might have expected took place before my
very eyes. For she turned and faced me, empty as I was. The soul in her, realizing
the truth, stood erect to meet the misery of lonely pain that inevitably
lay ahead--in some sense as though she welcomed it already; and,
strangest of all, she blossomed, physically as well as mentally, into a
fuller revelation of gracious loveliness than before, sweeter and more
exquisite, indeed, than anything life had yet shown to me. Moreover,
having captured me, she changed; the grossness I had discerned, that
which had led me to my own undoing, vanished completely as though it
were transmuted into desires and emotions of a loftier kind. Some
purpose, some intention, a hope immensely resolute shone out of her, and
of such spiritual loveliness, it seemed to me, that I watched it in a
kind of dumb amazement. I watched it--unaware at first of my own shame, emptied of any emotion
whatsoever, I think, but that of a startled worship before the grandeur
of her generosity.