"Isn't it--isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his
ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I
didn't think--it came like a thunderclap."
"Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"
"My God--she--she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words
to himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders
already bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how
he had loved in his past lives.
"What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.
"I don't care a damn what she says."
At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should,
properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I
told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must
have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness
and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a
tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had
told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed
by a man before.
Charlie spoke on, and on, and on; while I, separated from him by
thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things.
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