“Going out?” he said, casually, “may I walk with you?”
“Please do,” said Anita, and they started out together.
“I’m sorry enough to do anything that seems clandestine,” said Lockwood as they walked, “but that feline lady, Miss Bascom, is watching your every move, and I can’t let her get anything to criticise you for.”
A grateful look rewarded him, and then Gordon went on: “Tell me, did I read your eyes aright? Do you, can you care to know how I love you? How I have loved you from the moment I first saw you. Do you care, Anita? May I love you?”
“But you don’t know me,” she said, in a soft little voice. “And you do know dreadful things about me.”
“I don’t care for any of those things. If they’re dreadful, they’re not true.”
“Yes—they are true—some of them. And there are more dreadful things to know—that you don’t even suspect—Gordon.”
The last word, spoken in the lowest, tenderest of voices, completed Lockwood’s infatuation. Had she not said that, he might have been deterred by her statements, but that softly-breathed name, stirred his pulses, and in the deepening dusk he found her hand and said:
“Anita, I want you—I love you—none of these things count. I know you are in no way guiltily connected with this crime—if you are mixed up with it, it is through force of circumstances, and anyway, I don’t care who or what you are—I love you, I believe in you and I want you.”
“But it’s all so dreadful—and I can’t tell—”