"For us!" There was an inestimable touch of intimacy about those words.
"Thanks," he said (was his voice really as strange and as husky as it sounded to his ears?) "Thanks—if I won't be keeping you up."
Again, that suggestion of close acquaintance and absolute familiarity, as she let herself and him into the house with her latchkey, and closed the door softly on the world outside. It was all nothing to her. She moved about with perfect self-possession, unaware of the agitation within him.
"Let me turn up the light," she said, leading the way into the sitting-room.
He stumbled against something in the feeble light.
"Mind," she cried, laughingly. "Don't knock my treasures over."
And then, suddenly, the room was in utter darkness.
He heard her make an impatient murmur of annoyance. "There! I've turned it the wrong way.... Don't move ... I know where the matches are."
He heard the rustle of her dress, and her breathing, and the faint fragrance of her pervaded the darkness. He stood there in the black room with the blood surging in his veins, and pulses that seemed to be hammering against the silence. He could feel the throbbing of his temples. She moved about the room, and once she came near to him, so near that her hair seemed to float across his face with a caress that was soft and silken ... clearly in his brain he pictured her, smiling, pure and beautiful ... this darkness was becoming intolerable. He made a step towards her....