Pilgrimage Vol. 2 'Backwater' by Dorothy Richardson

She lay looking quietly into his imagined face till the room had gone. Then the face grew dim and far off and at last receded altogether into darkness. That darkness was dreadful. It was his own life. She would never know it. However well they got to know each other they would always be strangers. Probably he never thought of her when he was alone. Only of Shakespeare and politics. What would he think if he knew she thought of him? But he thought of her when he saw her. That was utterly certain; the one thing certain in the world…That day, coming along Putney Hill with mother, tired and dull and trying to keep her temper, passing his house, seeing him standing at his window, alone and pale and serious. The sudden lightening of his face surprised her again, violently, as she recalled it. It had lit up the whole world from end to end. He did not know that he had looked like that. She had turned swiftly from the sudden knowledge coming like a blow on her heart, that one day he would kiss her. Not for years and years. But one day he would bend his head. She wrenched herself from the thought, but it was too late. She thanked heaven she had looked; she wished she had not; the kiss had come; she would forget it; it had not touched her, it was like the breath of summer. Everything had wavered; her feet had not felt the pavement. She remembered walking on, exulting with hanging head, cringing close to the ivy which hung from the top of the garden wall, sorry and pitiful towards her mother, and every one who would never stand first with Ted.

…There were girls who let themselves be kissed for fun…Playing ‘Kiss in the Ring,’ being kissed by someone they did not always mean to be with, all their life…how sad and dreadful. Why did it not break their hearts?