All this she might reveal to Hugh soon—but not to-night. She was a little sleepy to-night, and anyway, there was a quicker and simpler way of snatching him back if he really was pulling at a slightly worn leash and inhibited by pride. The easier way had also the merits of having been tested many, many times before on Hugh, and always it had worked with mathematical certainty. So she had whispered, angrily or passionately—it didn’t matter which—“Kiss me, Hugh.”
To-night it worked as expected, except for a slight hitch. But the hitch was, indeed, so slight and so passing that it hardly bothered her at all. In fact, it added zest. With Hugh’s free hand, the hand not clasped to the palm of hers, he put her away from him. But his face was so close that she could almost discern what she had wanted to discern, the hunger in his dark eyes in the less-dark interior of her speeding motor. His touch was gentle but his voice was not.
“Joan! It’s got to be more than this. You know how I want you. I’m not going on playing at love. I’m through. Have been all winter.”
She stayed very still in his repudiating grip. But she smiled. She could wait, smiling. She had only to wait a minute, however. And it was a blissful minute, tinglingly electric with her power over him. His arm went suddenly around her shoulders. She lifted her face. He kissed her eyes shut before he kissed her slightly parted lips.
Joan could surrender more in a kiss than many women can surrender in a life-time of more dangerous giving,—for all the complexities and refined subtilities of her nature. Joan’s desire for Hugh’s desire was fully satisfied in that long kiss. As for Hugh, flames—a conflagration—roared against the dark of his mind. This was chaos to him, not satisfaction. But a shadowy sort of consolation would come to him later in the realization that once again Joan had loved him a little.
Now he was holding her cheek close against his with the hand that had held her away a minute ago. Their faces were as close, as hard pressed, as the palms of their hands.
Not until the motor slowed to a stop and Amos had got down and was coming around to open the car door did they draw apart. Joan moved then, and the interior of the car was flooded with light. How could she have delivered them up so ruthlessly to the glare? Probably for appearances. But surely Joan was superior to wanting to justify herself to her chauffeur!