Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/69

 didn't we? Because we were afraid—or I was afraid and made you afraid! Afraid; afraid of everything right and natural and warm and alive because forever I was told to think of that!" he gestured with defiance to the still, gray stones of the graveyard. "What a crazy idea to believe you ought to be brought up for death instead of for life! Let's get away from here."

Being in the driver's seat, of course he was the one to do the getting away; and he put a foot on the clutch and a hand to the gear. "Kiss me," he commanded her, leaning toward her before he started the car; she kissed him again and he drove away from the dark resting-ground of the dead to the avenue of lighted homes aglow through the snow.

"The lust of the flesh," the words of Paul so often repeated by his father ran in Dave's brain and iterated themselves more emphatically the more he would smother them. "Ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh; for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit."

This amazing moment, which he had just taken, stirred what was called the lust of the flesh. "What of it?" David Herrick defied himself. He looked about to Alice who was sitting in her corner gazing at him and not saying a word. "Happy?" he demanded of her.

She waited a moment and then said, steadily: "More than I ever was in all my life, I think."

"You don't know?"

"Yes, I know—about me, Davey; but about you, I don't."