Girls.

Chieggo merzede e sono alpestro tygre.

It was a four-by-nine-inch slice cut fresh from Joe's memory but, for all its immediacy, rendered in clean, unhurried lines, with a precision at once anatomical and emotional: you felt Joe's tenderness toward that curled little foot, that hollow back, that open, dreaming mouth drawing a last deep breath of unconsciousness. You wanted her to be able to go on sleeping, as long as you could watch.

Thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small;

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss

And softly said, "dear heart, how like you this?"

Strange fits of passion have I known: And I will dare to tell, But in the Lover's ear alone, What once to me befell.

'Twere profanation of our joys to tell the laity of our love.

It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered to give him a chance to come closer; but he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away.