Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/16

Rh loaded revolver in his pocket, bade him swiftly traverse the 1,100 miles intervening betwixt him and his deep revenge. This done, I went to a grocery hard by, to drink beer to drown out the agony felt for the man,—the detestation of the woman. "Man proposes," but God upsets his calculations; or Destiny does. So now, on my way to Grambrins Halle, I encountered my little friend, the German child, at play. She strangely interested me; and I left the Halle with but one glass, where I had intended to drink at least a dozen. The child saved me! Returning, I caught her up, seated her jauntily on my head, and marched back to the lonely house on the hill, where I threw myself on the lounge, kissed this little child goodby, and, as she ran off trippingly home, at her little brother's call, who was just then having dreadful trouble with his rabbits, I caught sight of a scintillant flash of white light issuant from her head, like the radiant gleam of a peerless diamond, when all the lamps are brightly burning; and a glowing, streaming iridescence flowed from her lips. I had drawn her to me, and pressed her rosy, childish face to mine, inhaling the balmy aroma of her pure, fresh, joyous soul; and a portion of the roseate fire of her sweet lips had clung to mine. I saw it, like a thin cloud of opalescence, waving gently to and fro, as I moved my head, or breathed. I began to study the meaning of a kiss.

There are but few among the many who know the meaning of a kiss:—or that the soul, from its seat in the brain, is in telegraphic unity with the lips.—affectional, friendly, filial, parental, general, in the upper one; sensuous, magnetic, passional, in the lower; nor that, when loving lips meet lips that love, there is a magnetic discharge of soul-flame, and each party gives and receives large measures of magnetic life and fluid love at the instant of impact or contact, which measures are greater or less according to the love-fulness or emptiness of each respectively. While pondering on this, and marvelling at the beautiful irradiation alluded to above, I chanced to recur in thought to the mirror scene, and to the woman and the man, the weirdly strange phantorama already described; again that strange numbness of the outer being came over me, and in another instant I lay there, rapt, entranced, transfigured, and for the time being was as