Branch: there had been, in particular, in far-off discarded times, Fred Gillow's large but artless embraces. Well—nothing of that kind had seemed of any more account than the click of a leaf in a woodland walk. It had all been merely epidermal, ephemeral, part of the trivial accepted "business" of the social comedy. But this kiss of Strefford's was what Nick's had been, under the New Hampshire pines, on the day that had decided their fate. It was a kiss with a future in it: like a ring slipped upon her soul. And now, in the dreadful pause that followed—while Strefford fidgeted with his cigarette-case and rattled the spoon in his cup—Susy remembered what she had seen through the circle of Nick's kiss: that blue illimitable distance which was at once the landscape at their feet and the future in their souls. . . .
Perhaps that was what Strefford's sharply narrowed eyes were seeing now, that same illimitable distance that she had lost forever—perhaps he was saying to himself, as she had said to herself when her lips left Nick's: "Each time we kiss we shall see it all again. . . ." Whereas all she herself had felt was the gasping recoil from Strefford's touch, and an intenser vision of the sordid room in which he and she sat, and of their two selves, more distant from each other than if their embrace had been a sudden thrusting apart. . . .
The moment prolonged itself, and they sat
