Throwing her arms about me she
kissed me thrice, on either cheek and on the lips, doubtless because she
was overwrought, and in her thankfulness forgot her maidenly reserve,
though as William Bull said afterwards, this forgetfulness did not cause
her to kiss him who had also helped her up the hill.
Those kisses were like wine to me, for it is strange how, if we love
her, by the decree of Nature the touch of a beautiful woman's lips, felt
for the first time, affects us in our youth. Whatever else we forget,
that we always remember, however false those lips afterwards be proved.
For then the wax is soft and the die sinks deep, so deep that no
after-heats can melt its stamp and no fretting wear it out while we live
beneath the sun.
Now my young blood being awakened, I was minded to return those kisses,
and began to do so with a Jew's interest, when I heard a rough voice
swearing many strange oaths, and heard also the other women who had
sheltered with us in the cave begin to titter, for the moment forgetting
all their private woes, as those of their sex will do when there is
kissing in the wind.
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