As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring. He reviewed
all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, and
longed for it again. His gaze wandered often toward her lips, and he
yearned for them hungrily. But there was nothing gross or earthly about
this yearning. It gave him exquisite delight to watch every movement and
play of those lips as they enunciated the words she spoke; yet they were
not ordinary lips such as all men and women had. Their substance was not
mere human clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and his desire for them
seemed absolutely different from the desire that had led him to other
women's lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own physical lips upon
them, but it would be with the lofty and awful fervor with which one
would kiss the robe of God. He was not conscious of this transvaluation
of values that had taken place in him, and was unaware that the light
that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was quite the same light
that shines in all men's eyes when the desire of love is upon them. He
did not dream how ardent and masculine his gaze was, nor that the warm
flame of it was affecting the alchemy of her spirit. Her penetrative
virginity exalted and disguised his own emotions, elevating his thoughts
to a star-cool chastity, and he would have been startled to learn that
there was that shining out of his eyes, like warm waves, that flowed
through her and kindled a kindred warmth. She was subtly perturbed by
it, and more than once, though she knew not why, it disrupted her train
of thought with its delicious intrusion and compelled her to grope for
the remainder of ideas partly uttered. Speech was always easy with her,
and these interruptions would have puzzled her had she not decided that
it was because he was a remarkable type. She was very sensitive to
impressions, and it was not strange, after all, that this aura of a
traveller from another world should so affect her.