_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.”