“Oh, Dick, what are WE to do?”
The plural struck him as deliciously sweet and subtle. Had they really been singled out for this strange experience, or still stranger hallucination? His arm crept around her; she gently withdrew from it.
“I must go now,” she murmured; “but I couldn't sleep until I told you all. You know, Dick, I have no one else to come to, and it seemed to me that YOU ought to know it first. I feel better for telling you. You will tell me to-morrow what you think we ought to do.”
They reached the door, opening it softly. She lingered for a moment on the threshold.
“Tell me, Dick” (she hesitated), “if that—that really were a spirit, and not a real man,—you don't think that—that kiss” (she shuddered) “could do me harm!”
He shuddered too, with a strange and sympathetic consciousness that, happily, she did not even suspect. But he quickly recovered himself and said, with something of bitterness in his voice, “I should be more afraid if it really were a man.”
“Oh, thank you, Dick!”
Her lips parted in a smile of relief; the color came faintly back to her cheek.
A wild thought crossed his fancy that seemed an inspiration. They would share the risks alike. He leaned towards her: their lips met in their first kiss.
“Oh, Dick!”