She glanced up at him, her eyes full of scared curiosity, not knowing
what extraordinary thing was going to happen next. He had dropped his
face into his hands, and stood thus for a moment without moving. She
peered at him uneasily, like a child at some one suffering from an
unknown complaint and giving evidence of the suffering in strange ways.
He let his hands fall, closed his eyes for a second, then opened them
and came toward her with his face beatified. Delicately, almost
reverently, he bent down and touched her cheek with his lips.
The lover's first kiss! This, too, Susan had heard about, and from
what she had heard she had imagined that it was a wonderful experience
causing unprecedented joy. She was nearly as agitated as he, but
through her agitation, she realized with keen disappointment that she
had felt nothing in the least resembling joy. An inward shrinking as
the bearded lips came in contact with her skin was all she was
conscious of. There was no rapture, no up-gush of anything lovely or
unusual. In fact, it left her with the feeling that it was a duty duly
discharged and accepted--this that she had heard was one of life's
crises, that you looked back on from the heights of old age and told
your grandchildren about.
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