Orlando's touch was never either clammy or fevered. She could recall
every time that he had touched her: when her fingers and his met on the
afternoon that Li Choo had thrown himself down the staircase with the
priceless porcelain; also the evening of the night spent on the prairie
when, after the accident, her hand had been linked into his arm; also
when he had clasped her fingers at their meeting in the morning. On each
occasion she had felt a thrill like that of music--persuasive, living
vibrations passing to remote recesses of her being.
No nearer had she ever come to the man she loved, no nearer had he sought
to come. Once, the evening after the night spent on the prairie, when
old Joel Mazarine had tried to make her pray and ask God's forgiveness,
and he had kissed her with the lips of hungry old age, she had suddenly
sat up in bed, her heart beating hard, every nerve palpitating, because
in imagination she had seen herself in Orlando's arms, with his lips
pressed to hers.
Poor neophyte in life's mysteries, having served as a slave at false
altars of which she did not even know the ritual, it was no wonder that,
after all she had suffered, she could not now bring herself into tune
with the commonplace intercourse of life.
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