She did not resist. She did not draw back; nor did she say a word.
Only, just as his lips were about to touch hers, something—"an immense, invisible, and very sad presence,"—he described it afterward—seemed to creep into the room, like a winged thing.
It came soundlessly; but he felt the sharp displacement of air. It was as if a huge bird's pinions had cut through it, the left tip resting on the farther window-sill, the right on a chair near the bed, on which he had thrown his khaki overcoat and his campaign hat.
With it came a sense of unutterable peace and sweetness, strangely flavored with a great pain. As he leaned back without having touched her lips, the pain was mysteriously transmuted.
It became a realization, not a vision, of color—clear, deep scarlet with a faint golden glow in the center. Then began to assume a definite form—that of a gigantic Gloire de Dijon rose, which, as he watched, slowly shrank to its natural proportions until it rested, velvety, scented, where he had dropped the rose among the books on his writing-desk.
He rose to pick it up.
