Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/155

 much in intensity, as by spread of their interests together till now it held idea of children and of a home as well as of work in which their hearts would be together.

With Fidelia he felt nothing of this. He wanted to take her away; he wanted her all to himself where no one could come. He pictured a warm, pleasant, indolent place where she and he would live in love.

Love? Love? Not in the love of which his father always talked; not in the love of God. He wanted to live with this wonderful girl in the love of the flesh—in what his father would call low, sensual sin. He wanted to marry her, of course; but marriage only made more mockery of such sin as he desired. It could not change the essence; David, son of Ephraim Herrick, knew that.

But that night there in the dark under the stars he planned how he might take Fidelia to his place of love.