Читать книгу A Book About Myself онлайн

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She pressed her nose to the pane and then breathed on it, making a misty screen between herself and the outside upon which she wrote my initials, rubbed them out, then breathed on the window again and wrote her own. Her face was like a small wax flower in the moonlight. I had drawn so close, moved by her romantic call, that my body almost touched hers. Then I slipped an arm about her waist and was about to kiss her when I heard my sister’s voice:

“Now, Al and Theo, you come back!”

“We must go,” she said shamefacedly, and as she started I ventured to touch her hand. She looked at me and smiled, and we went back to the other room. I waited eagerly for other solitary moments.

Because the festivities were too general and inclusive there was no other opportunity that evening, but the next morning, church claiming some and sleep others, there was a half-hour or more in which I was alone with her in the front room, looking over the family album. I realized that by now she was as much drawn to me as I to her, and that, as in the case of my Scotch maid, I was master if I chose so to be. I was so wrought up in the face of this opportunity, however, that I scarcely had courage to do that which I earnestly believed I could do. As we stood over the album looking at the pictures I toyed first with the strings of her apron and then later, finding no opposition, allowed my hand to rest gently at her waist. Still no sign of opposition or even consciousness. I thrilled from head to toe. Then I closed my arm gently about her waist, and when it became noticeably tight she looked up and smiled.