"I do thank you!" she exclaimed. "And I want you to sit down."
Her look, her gesture, overcame him. He took a step forward, seized the offered hands, and almost crushed them in his. Marise was rather frightened, rather touched, but not too much moved to notice that he didn't know enough about behaviour to take off his gloves—his brutally new, gamboge-coloured gloves! Or else he was absent minded!
Partly because her one ring was pressing into her finger, partly because she wished for instant release, she gave a little squeak of pain. "Oh, my ring!"
Red blood poured up to the man's brown face. The pressure relaxed, but he did not let her hands go. He lifted them to his lips and kissed first one, then the other. His mouth was hot as a coal just dropped from the fire!... That was her quick impression. She was not shocked, for her hands had been kissed a hundred times by sad, mad men—though not men like this. She said "Oh!" however, and gazed at him reproachfully, as "Dolores" gazed at the villain in "The Song."
The effect upon Garth was the same as if she had been sincerely offended. He let her hands fall, and stammered "Forgive me!"
Marise was beginning to enjoy herself a little, on the whole.
Of course the man was common and rough. What was it that Tony had called his despised brother officer? A "temporary gentleman!" Yes, that was it! And a "momentary gentleman" would be even more appropriate, she thought, because at an instant of deep emotion all decent men were raised to the heights of Nature's gentility. This fellow was as fine as any nobleman, for these few seconds of time, she realised, and it was worship of her which added the new decoration to his V.C.! Despite her disappointment, she felt that romance was not utterly lacking in the situation.
"There's nothing to forgive," were the obvious words her lips spoke: but the language of such eyes as hers could never be obvious. The soul of John Garth drowned in their blue depths. As dying men lose all care for conventions, so did he lose it while thus he drowned.
"I love you—I love you!" he faltered. "You know, don't you? From the first—from the first look!"
"Oh no, I don't know that," Marise soothed him. "But you've been so kind. Those wonderful presents! You ought not——"