"I don't!" she denied. "It just doesn't mean anything."
"It does, and you know it does. I had to kiss you. Oh, sweetheart, sweetheart, we are both so lonely! Kiss me."
"No, no!" She held him away from her.
"Yes, I tell you!"
She encircled his neck with her arm, laid her cheek beside his chin, rejoiced boundlessly in the man roughness of his chin, of his coat-sleeve, the man scent of him-scent of tobacco and soap and hair. She opened her lips to his. Slowly she drew her arm from about his neck, his arm from about her waist.
"Walter!" she mourned, "I did want you. But you must be good to me-not kiss me like that-not now, anyway, when I'm lonely for you and can't resist you.... Oh, it wasn't wrong, was it, when we needed each other so? It wasn't wrong, was it?"
"Oh no-no!"
"But not-not again-not for a long while. I want you to respect me. Maybe it wasn't wrong, dear, but it was terribly dangerous. Come, let's stand out in the cool air on the roof for a while and then you must go home."
They came out on the flat, graveled roof, round which all the glory of the city was blazing, and hand in hand, in a confidence delicately happy now, stood worshiping the spring.
"Dear," he said, "I feel as though I were a robber who had gone crashing right through the hedge around your soul, and then after that come out in a garden-the sweetest, coolest garden.... I will try to be good to you-and for you." He kissed her finger-tips.
"Yes, you did break through. At first it was just a kiss and the-oh, it was the kiss, and there wasn't anything else. Oh, do let me live in the little garden still."
"Trust me, dear."
"I will trust you. Come. I must go down now."
"Can I come to see you?"
"Yes."
"Goldie, listen," he said, as they came down-stairs to her hallway. "Any time you'd like to marry me-I don't advise it, I guess I'd have good intentions, but be a darn poor hand at putting up shelves-but any time you'd like to marry me, or any of those nice conventional things, just lemme know, will you? Not that it matters much. What matters is, I want to kiss you good-night."
"No, what matters is, I'm not going to let you!... Not to-night.... Good-night, dear."
She scampered down the hall. She tiptoed into the living-room, and for an hour she brooded, felt faint and ashamed at her bold response to his kiss, yet wanted to feel his sharp-ridged lips again. Sometimes in a bitter frankness she told herself that Walter had never even thought of marriage till their kiss had fired him. She swore to herself that she would not give all her heart to love; that she would hold him off and make him value her precious little store of purity and tenderness. But passion and worry together were lost in a prayer for him. She knelt by the window till her own individuality was merged with that of the city's million lovers.
§ 3
Like sickness and war, the office grind absorbs all personal desires. Love and ambition and wisdom it turns to its own purposes. Every day Una and Walter saw each other. Their hands touched as he gave her papers to file; there was affection in his voice when he dictated, and once, outside the office door, he kissed her. Yet their love was kept suspended. They could not tease each other and flirt raucously, like the telephone-girl and the elevator-starter.
Every day he begged her to go to dinner with him, to let him call at the flat, and after a week she permitted him to come.
§ 4
At dinner, when Una told her mother that a young gentleman at the office-in fact, Mr. Babson, the editor whose dictation she took-was going to call that evening, Mrs. Golden looked pleased, and said: "Isn't that nice! Why, you never told mother he was interested in you!"
"Well, of course, we kind of work together-"
"I do hope he's a nice, respectful young man, not one of these city people that flirt and drink cocktails and heaven knows what all!"
"Why, uh-I'm sure you'll like him. Everybody says he's the cleverest fellow in the shop."
"Office, dear, not shop.... Is he-Does he get a big salary?"
"Why, mums, I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea! How should I know?"
"Well, I just asked.... Will you put on your pink-and-white crêpe?"
"Don't you think the brown silk would be better?"
"Why, Una, I want you to look your prettiest! You must make all the impression you can."
"Well, perhaps I'd better," Una said, demurely.
Despite her provincial training, Mrs. Golden had a much better instinct for dress than her sturdy daughter. So long as she was not left at home alone, her mild selfishness did not make her want to interfere with Una's interests. She ah'd and oh'd over the torn border of Una's crêpe dress, and mended it with quick, pussy-like movements of her fingers. She tried to arrange Una's hair so that its pale golden texture would shine in broad, loose undulations, and she was as excited as Una when they heard Walter's bouncing steps in the hall, his nervous tap at the door, his fumbling for a push-button.
Una dashed wildly to the bedroom for a last nose-powdering, a last glance at her hair and nails, and slowly paraded to the door to let him in, while Mrs. Golden stood primly, with folded hands, like a cabinet photograph of 1885.
So the irregular Walter came into a decidedly regular atmosphere and had to act like a pure-minded young editor.
They conversed-Lord! how they conversed! Mrs. Golden respectably desired to know Mr. Babson's opinions on the weather, New-Yorkers, her little girl Una's work, fashionable city ministers, the practical value of motor-cars, and the dietetic value of beans-the large, white beans, not the small, brown ones-she had grown both varieties in her garden at home (Panama, Pennsylvania, when Mr. Golden, Captain Golden he was usually called, was alive)-and had Mr. Babson ever had a garden, or seen Panama? And was Una really attending to her duties?
All the while Mrs. Golden's canary trilled approval of the conversation.
Una listened, numbed, while Walter kept doing absurd things with his face-pinched his lips and tapped his teeth and rubbed his jaw as though he needed a shave. He took off his eye-glasses to wipe them and tied his thin legs in a knot, and all the while said, "Yes, there's certainly a great deal to that."
At a quarter to ten Mrs. Golden rose, indulged in a little kitten yawn behind her silvery hand, and said: "Well, I think I must be off to bed.... I find these May days so languid. Don't you, Mr. Babson? Spring fever. I just can't seem to get enough sleep.... Now you mustn't stay up too late, Una dear."
The bedroom door had not closed before Walter had darted from his chair, picked Una up, his hands pressing tight about her knees and shoulders, kissed her, and set her down beside him on the couch.
"Wasn't I good, huh? Wasn't I good, huh? Wasn't I? Now who says Wally Babson ain't a good parlor-pup, huh? Oh, you old darling, you were twice as agonized as me!"
And that was all he said-in words. Between them was a secret, a greater feeling of unfettered intimacy, because together they had been polite to mother-tragic, pitiful mother, who had been enjoying herself so much without knowing that she was in the way. That intimacy needed no words to express it; hands and cheeks and lips spoke more truly. They were children of emotion, young and crude and ignorant, groping for life and love, all the world new to them, despite their sorrows and waiting. They were clerklings, not lords of love and life, but all the more easily did they yield to longing for happiness. Between them was the battle of desire and timidity-and not all the desire was his, not hers all the timidity. She fancied sometimes that he was as much afraid as was she of debasing their shy seeking into unveiled passion. Yet his was the initiative; always she panted and wondered what he would do next, feared and wondered and rebuked-and desired.
He abruptly drew her head to his shoulder, smoothed her hair. She felt his fingers again communicate to her every nerve a tingling electric force. She felt his lips quest along her cheek and discover the soft little spot just behind her ear. She followed the restless course of his hands across her shoulders, down her arm, lingeringly over her hand. His hand seemed to her to have an existence quite apart from him, to have a mysterious existence of its own. In silence they rested there. She kept wondering if his shoulder had not been made just for her cheek. With little shivers she realized that this was his shoulder, Walter's, a man's, as the rough cloth prickled her skin. Silent they were, and for a time secure, but she kept speculating as to what he would dare to do next-and she fancied that he was speculating about precisely the same thing.