That night Anne was wakened from her sleep by a wisp of a figure that
came slipping to her bedside, announced only by the cautious breathing
of her name:
"Anne! Anne!" her sister was whispering close to her cheek.
"Why, Lyd," said Anne, "what is it?"
The figure was kneeling now, and Anne tried to rise on her elbow to
invite Lydia in beside her. But Lydia put a hand on her shoulder and
held her still.
"Whisper," she said, and then was silent so long that Anne, waiting and
hearing her breathe, stared at her in the dark and wondered at her.
"What is it, lovey?" she asked at length, and Lydia's breathing hurried
into sobs, and she said Anne's name again, and then, getting a little
control of herself, asked the question that had brought her.
"Anne, when people kiss you, is it different if they are men?"
Now Anne did rise and turned the clothes back, but Lydia still knelt and
shivered.
"You've been having bad dreams," said Anne. "Come in here, lovey, and
Anne'll sing 'Lord Rendal.'"
"I mean," said Lydia, from her knees, "could anybody kiss me, except
Farvie, and not have it like Farvie--I mean have it terrible--and I kiss
him back--and--Anne, what would it mean?"
"That's a nightmare," said Anne. "Now you've got all cool and waked up,
you run back to bed, unless you'll get in here."
Lydia put a fevered little hand upon her.
"Anne, you must tell me," she said, catching her breath. "Not a
nightmare, a real kiss, and neither of us wanting to kiss anybody, and
still doing it and not being sorry. Being glad."
She sounded so like herself in one of her fiercenesses that Anne at last
believed she was wholly awake and felt a terror of her own.
"Who was it, Lydia?" she asked sternly. "Who is it you are thinking
about?"
"Nobody," said Lydia, in a sudden curt withdrawal. She rose to her feet.
"Yes, it was a nightmare."
She padded out of the room and softly closed the door, and Anne, left
sitting there, felt unreasoning alarm. She had a moment's determination
to follow her, and then she lay down again and thought achingly of Lydia
who was grown up and was yet a child. And still, Anne knew, she had to
come to woman's destiny. Lydia was so compact of sweetnesses that she
would be courted and married, and who was Anne, to know how to marry her
rightly? So she slept, after a troubled interval; but Lydia lay awake
and stared the darkness through as if it held new paths to her desire.
What was her desire? She did not know, save that it had all to do with
Jeff. He had been cruelly used. He must not be so dealt with any more.
Her passion for his well-being, germinating and growing through the
years she had not seen him, had come to flower in a hot resolve that he
should be happy now. And in some way, some headlong, resistless way, she
knew she was to make his happiness, and yet in her allegiance to him
there was trouble and pain. He had made her into a new creature. The
kiss had done it.
He would not, Lydia thought, have kissed her if it were wrong, and yet
the kiss was different from all others and she must never tell. Nor must
it come again. She was plighted to him, not as to a man free to love
her, but to his well-being; and it was all most sacred and not to be
undone. She was exalted and she was shuddering with a formless sense of
the earth sway upon her. She had ever been healthy-minded as a child;
even the pure imaginings of love had not beguiled her. But now something
had come out of the earth or the air and called to her, and she had
answered; and because it was so inevitable it was right--yet right for
only him to know. Who else could understand?