“Two days ago,” said Lucia, “I couldn’t even do that.”
“That’s right,” said Chance.
“You might check the joints or something,” suggested Lucia.
“They’re all right,” said Chance, “or you couldn’t move like that.”
“Oh,” said Lucia.
She paused for a moment, and drew up her feet and put her head on her knees, looking at Chance.
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
“It’s true,” said Chance. He added, “You should be able to walk all right by now, too, but I wouldn’t walk too far at first.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Lucia, and she swung her feet off the bed and stood a bit too unsteadily beside it.
She walked a step or two from Chance, and turned to look over her shoulder. “I’m actually pretty good,” she said.
“In a day or two,” said Chance.
She took two or three more steps, and then turned to make it back to the bed.
She started to walk back toward Chance, tottering but brave, and then suddenly squeaked and had it not been for the fact that Chance swiftly, alertly, sprang to his feet, she might have fallen. Fortunately he managed to catch her.
“Oh,” she said.
Chance held her softly beside the bed, and stood her on her feet, lifting her by the arms, and then with his hands touched her hair and as she looked at him, he gently, very gently, kissed her forehead.
“I guess,” said Lucia, “I’m not as ready to walk as I thought.”
“I guess not,” said Chance.
Lucia was looking up at him and very slowly she lifted her lips to his and touched them. The sound of the kiss was very delicate.
“When you brought me inside two nights ago,” said Lucia, “you said something to me.”
“Merry Christmas,” said Chance.
“Not that,” said Lucia.
“Oh?” said Chance.
“I said something to you, too,” she said.
“Did you?” asked Chance.
“Yes,” said Lucia, kissing him again on the lips, a delicate thing, like the touch of a bird.
“You probably didn’t know what you were saying,” said Chance.
“I did,” said Lucia.
“What did you say?” asked Chance.
“My feet are cold,” said Lucia.
“Oh,” said Chance.
“I don’t have any money, you know,” said Lucia, looking up at him.
“I know,” said Chance.
Lucia pushed back from him a bit, careful not to let him go. “That’s not a very proper thing for a doctor to say,” she said.
“Sorry,” said Chance.
“So I don’t know what to do about your fee,” she said.
“I’d forget it,” said Chance.
“Not me,” said Lucia.
“There’s no fee,” said Chance.
“If I were a hussy,” said Lucia, “I’d know how to pay you.”
Chance smiled.
“I’m a hussy,” said Lucia.
Chance’s laugh was cut short when she seized him by the back of the head and pulled his face down to hers, kissing him so fiercely that he felt the imprint of her teeth on his lip. She then pulled back, and laughed. “There,” she said, “you see!”
“Oh,” she cried as he drew her into his arms, and then she was frightened, feeling herself by his arms bound against his hardness, unable to move, and his mouth covered hers and through her teeth as she struggled she felt his remorseless tongue thrust through touch hers, turning it back and her body, she felt as if it were flying as he lifted her from the floor and placed her on the bed, half across it, and his tongue never left hers and she felt on her ankle, gently controlling her, his warm hand moving thighward and she swam not caring in pleasure wanting only his closeness and the immersion like joy and fainting and wine and not being able to move and not wanting to and then, he threw back his head and shook it crying aloud and she too cried out with joy loving him and reached for him loving him, loving him.
Chance, recalling the matter later, remembered that she had said at one point that she would like California.
Chance never quite understood how things had been decided but he knew that they had been, and that he was glad, and that he, as a male, and a rational one, would probably never by himself have been responsible for a decision so foolish, and so incontrovertibly glorious, as the one to which he discovered, to his amazement, he had been party.
His life was one of danger, he himself was hunted. He had nothing to offer a woman, neither security nor prospects. He had no home, no practice, no future. He had little to give her but himself and his love, and to his astonishment, he had learned that this was all she wanted.
Chance did not bother comprehending love, but was thankful to move within it, as one might move in the air he breathed, in the sunlight that showed him the world.
And Lucia, too, was unutterably other than she had been; and so too was her world, even to the shine on the walnut chest in the Carter soddy, the gleam on the brass kettle on the shelf near the stove, the tiny drops of grease on the kindling bucket, the grains of dust in the floor of the soddy, the weaving of the blanket, the careful stitching in the quilt on the bed; all things were different and beautiful to her and objects which she had hitherto thought prosaic, like a glass jar, a metal spoon, a piece of string, a kitchen match, the wood of a slat on a kitchen chair, now seemed to gather into themselves and radiate a startling, incredible perfection.
Chance replaced the blankets about Lucia.