An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser — Read

The wonder and, delight of a new and more intimate form of contact, of protest gainsaid, of scruples overcome! Days, when both, having struggled in vain against the greater intimacy which each knew that the other was desirous of yielding to, and eventually so yielding, looked forward to the approaching night with an eagerness which was as a fever embodying a fear. For with what qualms--what protests on the part of Roberta; what determination, yet not without a sense of evil--seduction--betrayal, on the part of Clyde. Yet the thing once done, a wild convulsive pleasure motivating both. Yet, not without, before all this, an exaction on the part of Roberta to the effect that never--come what might (the natural consequences of so wild an intimacy strong in her thoughts) would he desert her, since without his aid she would be helpless. Yet, with no direct statement as to marriage. And he, so completely overcome and swayed by his desire, thoughtlessly protesting that he never would-- never. She might depend on that, at least, although even then there was no thought in his mind of marriage. He would not do that. Yet nights and nights--all scruples for the time being abandoned, and however much by day Roberta might brood and condemn herself--when each yielded to the other completely. And dreamed thereafter, recklessly and wildly, of the joy of it--wishing from day to day for the time being that the long day might end--that the concealing, rewarding feverish night were at hand.

And Clyde feeling, and not unlike Roberta, who was firmly and even painfully convinced of it, that this was sin--deadly, mortal--since both his mother and father had so often emphasized that--the seducer--adulterer--who preys outside the sacred precincts of marriage. And Roberta, peering nervously into the blank future, wondering what--how, in any case, by any chance, Clyde should change, or fail her. Yet the night returning, her mood once more veering, and she as well as he hurrying to meet somewhere--only later, in the silence of the middle night, to slip into this unlighted room which was proving so much more of a Paradise than either might ever know again--so wild and unrecapturable is the fever of youth.