The BigamistYoung, F. E. Mills (Florence Ethel Mills)
Philosophy
The Bigamist
Young, F. E. Mills (Florence Ethel Mills)
Bigamy -- Fiction; British -- South Africa -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
"Night on the veld," she whispered,--"and just we two alone--watching.
All those other people... they don't count. I love it--don't you? Do
you notice the scents? They are stronger than in the daytime. What is
it. I can smell as we go along? Something... it's like heliotrope."
"The night convolvulus," he answered. "The veld is smothered with it in
places. All the best scents in Africa are night scents. The night is
the best time of all."
"Yes; it's the best time," she agreed. "A night like this! ... Isn't
it perfect? I am alive as I have never felt before. It's as though all
my senses were quickened. I didn't know it was possible to enjoy so
intensely. I wish this could last for ever... I wish that I might fall
asleep presently, and wake no more... Don't let us talk... Let us
watch together--like this,--and just feel..."
And so they remained, this man and woman who loved hopelessly, silent in
the darkened carriage, with faces pressed close against each other,--
intent on one another to the exclusion of every other thought,--clinging
together in a mute sympathy, and a love which had gone beyond utterance,
got above and outside ordinary physical passion, and stood for what it
was,--the supreme thing in their lives,--the best that life had offered
them, which neither separation nor sorrow could filch from their
possession.
And the train rushed on through the clear, luminous night that, warm
still and fragrant with the hundred different scents of the Karroo,
never darkened beyond a twilight duskiness, in which the veld showed
darkly defined against the deepening purple of the sky, where a young
moon rode like a white sickle amid the countless stars.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
Pamela awoke with the sun flashing in her eyes as the heavy lids lifted
reluctantly to the flush of the new day. She sat up and looked from the
window which had remained open and unshuttered through the night. Dare
had left her shortly before two o'clock, and she had slept soundly until
roused by the sun, which newly risen shone golden in a cloudless sky.
Already its fiery heat penetrated into the carriage, and struck fiercely
on her hands and face, and upon the cushions of the seat which felt warm
under her touch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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