Pearl Buck - A House Divided

She looked about upon the shining fields and on the silvery thatch of the little hamlet and she said, thoughtfully, “I can live anywhere, I think, but it is better for such people as we are to live in the new city. I keep thinking about that new city. I want to see it. I want to work there — perhaps I’ll make a hospital there one day — add my life to its new life. We belong there — we new ones — we—”

She stopped, tangled in her speech, and then suddenly she laughed a little and Yuan heard the laughter and looked at her. In that one look they two forgot where they were and they forgot the old dying man and that the land was no more sure and they forgot everything except the look they shared. Then Yuan whispered, his eyes still caught to hers, “You said you hated me!”

And she said breathlessly, “I did hate you, Yuan — only for that moment—”

Her lips parted while she looked at him and still their eyes sank deeper into each other’s. Indeed, Yuan could not move his eyes until he saw her little tongue slip out delicately and touch her parted lips, and then his eyes did move to those lips. Suddenly he felt his own lips burn. Once a woman’s lips had touched his and made his heart sick. … But he wanted to touch this woman’s lips! Suddenly and clearly as he had never wanted anything, he wanted this one thing. He could think of nothing else except he must do this one thing. He bent forward quickly and put his lips on hers.

She stood straight and still and let him try her lips. This flesh was his — his own kind. … He drew away at last and looked at her. She looked back at him, smiling, but even in the moonlight he could see her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining.

Then she said, striving to be usual, “You are different in that long cotton robe. I am not used to see you so.”

For a moment he could not answer. He wondered that she could speak so like herself after the touch upon her, could stand so composed, her hands still clasped behind her as she stood. He said unsteadily, “You do not like it? I look a farmer—”

“I like it,” she said simply, and then considering him thoughtfully she said, “It becomes you — it looks more natural on you than the foreign clothes.”

“If you like,” he said fervently, “I will wear robes always.”

She shook her head, smiling again, and answered, “Not always — sometimes one, sometimes the other, as the occasion is — one cannot always be the same—”

Again somehow they fell to looking at each other, speechless. They had forgotten death wholly; for them there was no more death. But now he must speak, else how could he longer bear this full united look?

“That — that which I just did — it is a foreign custom — if you disliked—” he said, still looking at her, and he would have gone on to beg her forgiveness if she disliked it, and then he wondered if she knew he meant the kiss. But he could not say the word, and there he stopped, still looking at her.

Then quietly she said, “Not all foreign things are bad!” and suddenly she would not look at him. She hung her head down and looked at the ground, and now she was as shy as any old-fashioned maid could ever be. He saw her eyelids flutter once or twice upon her cheeks and for a moment she seemed wavering and about to turn away and leave him alone again.

Then she would not. She held herself bravely and she straightened her shoulders square and sure, and she lifted up her head and looked back to him steadfastly, smiling, waiting, and Yuan saw her so.

His heart began to mount and mount until his body was full of all his beating heart. He laughed into the night. What was it he had feared a little while ago?

“We two,” he said—“we two — we need not be afraid of anything.”