"I'm not going to marry Sir Owen, but I must not let you kiss me."
"But you must, Evelyn, you must."
"Why must I?"
"Do you not feel that it is to be?"
"What is to be?"
"I do not know what, but I have been drawn towards you so long a
while--long before I saw you, ever since I heard your name, the moment I
saw that old photograph in the music-room, I knew."
"What did you know?"
"When I heard your name it called up an image in my mind, and that image
has never wholly left me--it comes back often like a ghost."
"When you were thinking of something different?"
"I am your destiny, or one of your destinies."
Her eyes were fixed eagerly upon him; his darkness and the mysteries he
represented attracted her, and she even felt she could follow. At the
same moment his eyes seemed the most beautiful in the world, and she
desired him to make love to her. While enticing, she resisted him, now
more feebly, and when he let go her hands she sat looking at him,
wondering how she was to get through the evening without kissing him....
She spoke to him about his opera. He asked her if she were going to sing
it, and she looked at him with vague, uncertain eyes. He said he knew
she never would. She asked him why he thought so, and again a great
longing bent him towards her. She withdrew her hands and face from his
lips, and they had begun to talk of other things when he perceived her
face close to his. Unable to resist he kissed her cheek, fearing that
she would order him from the room. But at the instant of the touching of
his lips, she threw her arm about his neck, and drew him down as a
mermaiden draws her mortal lover into the depths, and in a wondering
world of miraculous happiness he surrendered himself.
"Dearest, dearest," he said, raising himself to look at her.
"Ulick, Ulick," she said, "let me kiss you, I've longed such a while."
He thought he had never seen so radiant a face. What disguise had
fallen? And looking at her, he strove to discover the woman who had
denied him so often. This new woman seemed made all of light and love
and transport, the woman of all his divinations, the being the old
photograph in the old music-room had warned him of, the being that the
voice of his destiny had told him he was to meet. And as they stood by
the fireplace looking into each other's eyes, he gradually became aware
of his happiness. It broke in his heart with a thrill and shiver like an
exquisite dawn, opal and rose; the brilliancy of her eyes, the rapture
of her face, the magnetic stirring of the little gold curls along her
forehead were so wonderful that he feared her as an enchanter fears the
spirit he has raised. Like one who has suddenly chanced on the hilltop,
he gazed on the prospect, believing it all to be his. They stood gazing
into each other's eyes too eager to speak, and when she called his name
he remembered the legended forest, and replied with the song of the bird
that leads Siegfried to Brunnhilde. She laughed, and sang the next two
bars, and then seemed to forget everything.
"Dearest, of what are you thinking?"
"Only if I ever shall kiss you again, Ulick."
"You will always kiss me!"