With her
conscious but pale face so near his own, with the faint odor of her hair
clinging to her, and with the sweet confusion of the half lingering,
half withheld contact of her hand and arm, all had changed. He did not
dare to reflect that he could never again approach her except with this
feeling. He did not dare to think of anything; he abandoned himself to
the sense that had begun with the invasion of her hair-bound myrtle in
the silent school-room, and seemed to have at last led her to his arms.
They were moving now in such perfect rhythm and unison that they seemed
scarcely conscious of motion. Once when they neared the open window he
caught a glimpse of the round moon rising above the solemn heights of
the opposite shore, and felt the cool breath of mountain and river sweep
his cheek and mingle a few escaped threads of her fair hair with
his own. With that glimpse and that sensation the vulgarity and the
tawdriness of their surroundings, the guttering candles in their
sconces, the bizarre figures, the unmeaning faces seemed to be whirled
far into distant space.
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