I felt confused. It wasn't because I trembled at the possibility that Zora or someone else might have seen such a liberty taken. And with no resistance. I hadn't refused. I couldn't have. I hadn't the slightest indication or expectation that she would do what she had done.

 

Yet, having done it, I couldn't see what else could have occurred. It was so fitting, and so inherent.

 

There was no need to worry, even if a stranger had seen, if faces had crowded the windows. People did not look upon women kissing as anything especially reprehensible, or even notable. Some men thought it sweet evidence of our generous and child-like natures. That bore no threat or competition to their needs but only served to prop them and their dreams of embracing home and hearth as though they could participate without contributing.

 

Some men, I think, merely wished to know that such a precious refuge existed. Some men enjoyed to watch this very thing, or to paint it, or to possess these paintings. And women? Well, women, I think, accepted it or ignored it or erased its existence and possibility from their world, depending on their natures.

 

And I? On my stool?

 

I can only say that I had never been so stirred. That kiss, that gesture and that touch, washed over and through me reverberating intensely and deliciously with an exquisiteness I could never have imagined. I felt it lingering and all through me with a musical tingling which enlivened me inexpressibly. I felt heightened. I felt charged. I felt redeemed. I felt as I never had and realized that I had not before been able to feel singular and significant portions of myself.

 

"Your eyes," she said in the silent room, "seem sometimes blue-gray and sometimes the most fascinating green. They are your most striking feature but not your most unique. At this moment they are impossibly green, intrepidly green."