Читать книгу Bread - Charles G. Norris - Страница 23

That night Jeannette experienced all the exquisite joy and fierce agony of young love. It was an exhausting ordeal; she lived over and over the thrilling hours of the day that had terminated in that glorious, intoxicating second when the boy’s thin lips were against her own, and she had felt their warm, tingling pressure. The recollection brought to her wave upon wave of hot flushes that began somewhere deep down inside her being and flooded her with ecstasy. She strove against it, yet had no wish to control her thoughts. Shame,—some curious sense of wrong,—distressed her. It was not right;—it was all wrong! Instinct grappled with desire. She wept deliciously, convulsively, burying her head in her pillow and pressing its smothering softness against her mouth to stifle her sobbing breath that neither her mother nor Alice might hear it. Past midnight she rose and went noiselessly to the bathroom where she washed her face, carefully brushed and re-braided her hair. Her head ached and her swollen eyes were hot and painful. But she felt calmer. She studied her face for a long moment in the battered mirror that hung above the wash-stand, and as she looked a great quivering breath was wrung from her.

“Roy ... I can’t ... it can never be ... never, never be,” she whispered despairingly to her image.

For the moment she felt triumphant. She had conquered something, she did not know what. She dimmed the gaslight and found her way back to bed. Sleep came mercifully, and she did not wake until her mother kissed her the next morning.