Page:My Life and Loves.djvu/260

224 "All right," I said, turning away, "if you are re-solved to make fun of me and be mean to me—"

"Mean to you!" she cried, catching me and swinging me round, "I could easier be mean to myself. I'm glad you want to see me, glad and proud, and to-night, if you'll leave your door open, I'll come to you: mean, oh—" and she gave her soul in a kiss.

"Isn't it risky?" I asked.

"I tried the stairs this afternoon," she glowed, "they don't creak: no one will hear, so don't sleep or I'll surprise you"—By way of sealing the compact, I put my hand up her clothes and caressed her sex; it was hot and soon opened to me

"There now, Sir, go!" she smiled, "or you'll make me very naughty and I have a lot to do!"

"How do you mean 'naughty'," I said, "tell me what you feel? please!"

"I feel my heart beating", she said, "and, and—oh! wait till tonight and I'll try to tell you, dear!" and she pushed me out of the door.

For the first time in my life I notice here that the writer's art is not only inferior to reality in keenness of sensation and emotion; but also more same, monotonous even, because incapable of showing the tiny, yet ineffable differences of the same feeling which difference of personality brings with it. I seem to be repeating myself in describing Kate's love after Mrs. Mayhew's, making the girl's feelings a fainter replica of the woman's. In reality the two were completely different. Mrs. Mayhew's feelings long repressed flamed with the heat of an afternoon in July or August; while in Kate's one felt the freshness and cool of a summer morning, shot through with the suggestion of heat to come. And this comparison even is inept because it leaves out of the account, the effect of Kate's beauty, the great hazel eyes, the rosied