The Goddess Abides: A Novel by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online

dared not ask.
    “Good night,” she said, and stumbled, still half in sleep, across the room to her own door.
    In the night she woke to the patter of rain upon the roof. That was the end of snow, then, and of skiing. Tomorrow he would be gone and she alone again. To be alone now seemed intolerable to her. She would leave here and go home to Philadelphia.
    …It was still raining in the morning when she came out for breakfast. Jared had already prepared it, table set, orange juice waiting, bacon brown and an omelet turned in the pan.
    “The skies are cruel,” he complained, “but it’s just as well, perhaps. I must get back to the lab. I was going to steal another day, fight my conscience, but now there’s no need. You’re tired?”
    “A little—no, not tired, just muscle sore.”
    “Just as well we can’t be tempted.”
    They ate again almost in silence and she wondered, with a slight resentment, if he were on guard. After all, she had not kissed him. On the contrary! But they were both formal this gray morning.
    “Shall you be staying long?” he asked when, breakfast over, he prepared to leave.
    “No, I am leaving, perhaps tomorrow,” she replied. Then, resentment still alive, she added, “I shall probably stop on the way for a few days with an old friend, Edwin Steadley.”
    He heard this coldly. “Well, good-bye,” he said. Then added somewhat gracelessly, she thought, “Of course we’ll meet again.”
    “Why not?” she said.
    “In the course of human events,” Edwin said, “I cannot live much longer. I do not come of long-lived ancestry, and ancestry seems to count, in the matters of life and death. Already I have lived longer than my parents were able to do. My mother died at sixty-four, surviving my father by three years. He was five years younger than she. Their relationship was a strange one. In some ways he was like a son.”
    “I shouldn’t like such a relationship,” she said with decision.
    “Ah,” he said, “that’s because you have such an old lover. I could almost be your grandfather. But the truth is, my darling, that young men don’t really know how to love a woman. A young man thinks first of possessing a woman for himself—that is, of impregnating her. At my age a man knows this is impossible, and so he gives himself up to pure love of the woman, without thought of himself. He contemplates her with delight, as I contemplate you. He gives her joy insofar as she accepts his touch, which now is skilled, but in all such matters he thinks only of her. My dear, by the light of the moon, which by some heavenly magic shines at this moment upon your bed, your beautiful body looks like a statue of pale gold. What a fortunate man I am to be thus admitted to your private chamber!”
    “I can’t understand how it happened,” she said, smiling up at him through the mist of her fair hair, loose upon the pillows.
    “I had the courage to ask,” he replied.
    “You asked very confidently,” she said, laughing. “I can’t discern any lack of courage in you. But how is it that I had the courage to accept and how is it that it does not seem strange, and certainly not wrong, that you are here? I have never taken a lover before. Therefore why now?”
    “A need to give all and to accept all,” he said.
    “And why am I not in the least shy?” she asked him with genuine wonder.
    “We are one,” he replied. “Our minds were one, first, and then it became necessary that the oneness be complete.”
    “And will it continue?”
    “Until I feel death come near. When that moment occurs, I will let you know. Don’t try to stay me or comfort me. I must prepare for the solitary passing. I shall need all my strength for it. Therefore—”
    Here he paused so long that, moved to tenderness, she drew him into her arms.
    “Are you afraid?” she asked.
    But he would not accept pity, even a tender pity. He loosed himself from her and leaned over her, smoothing her long hair from her forehead,