It was ideal. An outcrop of rock formed a miniature Matterhorn in the forest, and beneath its shelter with the old trees as silent witnesses we sat and joked and laughed, and made twenty attempts to light a fire.
After lunch, a little incident happened which had an enormous effect on me; Zoe asked me whether I would mind if she smoked.
How many women in these days would think of doing that? And yet, had she but known it, I am still sufficiently old–fashioned to appreciate the implied respect for any possible prejudices which was contained in her request.
After lunch, I asked her a question to which I dreaded the answer.
I asked her whether, now that the old Colonel had gone to the Somme, whether that meant that she would be leaving Bruges.
She laughed and teasingly said: "Quien sabe, seņor," but seeing my real anxiety on this point, she assured me that she was not leaving for the present. The Colonel, she said, had a strange belief that once a man had served on the Flanders Front, and especially on the Ypres salient, he always came back to die there.
It appears that the Colonel has done fourteen months' service on the salient alone, and is firmly convinced he will end his career on that great burial ground. As we were talking about the Colonel I longed to ask her how she had met him, and perhaps find out why she lives with him, for I cannot believe she loves him, but I did not dare.
Strangely enough I found that a curious shyness had taken hold of me with regard to Zoe.
I said to myself, "Fool! you are alone with her, you long to kiss her; you have kissed her, first at the dinner–party, secondly when you said good–bye at her flat," and yet to–day it was different.
Then I was kissing a pretty woman, I was on the eve of a dangerous life, and I was simply extracting the animal pleasures whilst I lived.
To–day it was a case of Zoe, the personality I loved; I still longed to kiss her, but I wanted to have the unquestioned right to kiss her, as much as I wanted the kisses.
I wanted to have her for my own, away from the contaminating ownership of the old Colonel, and I determined to get her.
I think she noticed the changed attitude on my part, and perhaps she felt herself that a subtle change in our relationship had taken place, and whilst I meditated on these things she fell into a doze at my side.
I was sitting slightly above her, smoking to keep the midges away, and as I looked down on her childish figure a great tenderness for her filled my mind. She is very beautiful and to me desirable above all women; I can see her as she lay there trustfully at my feet. I will describe her, and then, when I get her photograph, I will read this when I am far away on a trip.
She is of average height, for I am just over six feet and she reaches to just above my shoulder. Her hair is gloriously thick and of a deep black colour, and lies low on her forehead. Her complexion is of the purest whiteness beyond compare, which but accentuates the red warmth of the lips which encircle her little mouth. Her figure is slight and her ankles are my delight, but her crowning glories, which I have purposely left till last, are her eyes.
I feel I could lose my soul; I have lost it, if I have one, in the violet depths of those eyes, which were veiled as she slept by the long black eyelashes which curled up delicately as they rested on her cheeks. I have re–read this description, and it is oh, so unsatisfying; would I had the pen of a Goethe or a Shakespeare, yet for want of more skill the description shall stand.
How I long for her to be mine, and yet, unfortunate that I am, I cannot for certain declare that she loves me.
A thousand doubts arise. I torment myself with recollections of her behaviour at the dinner–party, when within two hours of our first meeting she gave me her lips.
Yet did I not first roughly kiss her as we danced?
I find consolation in the fact that, though she has said nothing, yet her conduct to–day was different. She was so quiet after tea as we wandered back through the forests with the setting sun striking golden beams aslant the tree trunks.
Before we left I sang to her Tchaikowsky's beautiful song, "To the Forest," and I think she was pleased, for I may say with justice that my voice is of high quality for an amateur, and the song goes well without an accompaniment, whilst the atmosphere and surroundings were ideal.
