"I told you that I should miss you," she said haltingly, but with a womanly sweetness that moved him like a harp-chord. "And I could not miss you if I did not care for you? I do care for you—as much as I esteem and honor you; and that is a great deal. I have not yet asked myself, I think, if I love you. It may be that I do. If to miss you dreadfully when I do not see you every day—and, until now, I had not seen you for nearly a week!—is—is that, then perhaps I—"
Blythe, fighting, as if in actual conflict with something tangible, the temptation to take her in his arms, grasped her other hand. His face was very close to hers, and her curved, girlish lips sent his blood swirling with their maddening proximity. But he held himself in a vise, knowing that the hour had not yet struck for their contact of lips.
"It is enough that you care for me, Louise," he said, hoarsely fervid; and he felt as weak as a man who has successfully come through a great peril. "I could ask no more; I ask no more. Your caring for me is, I know now, more than I ever hoped or dreamed. It is enough—for now. It is a start." He smiled vaguely at the homeliness of his phrase. "I scarcely know what I am saying, Louise. But it doesn't much matter what a man says, does it, when he is happier than he has ever before been in his life?"
She raised the hand which had been resting on his arm and took hold, with thumb and forefinger, of a button of his coat. The unconscious little intimacy set his pulses to throbbing again.
"I shall know when I come back," she said to him with a simplicity that was almost quaint, "whether—whether my caring for you is more than just that. I believe that it is, but—but there are reasons—you know what they are—that restrain me from owning it, even if I knew positively; which I do not, yet, John."
John!
A quiver ran through the man, which, as she still was unconsciously toying with the button of his coat, she could not help but feel.
"Louise," he said, bending so close to her that he felt her cool, fragrant breath upon his cheek, "I want you to call me that; but not again now. There must be an interval—tonight, say—for me to become used to it. I warn you of my irresponsibility if you call me that again before tomorrow. And I am not minding, my dear, about what you do not know positively. Neither am I presuming upon it. You have made me happy enough. Everything else can wait. You are not committed. I wouldn't dream of holding you committed. Your life is still all your unpromised own. I tell you that it is enough for me now—it will be enough for me hereafter, if nothing else is to be—to know that I am even cared for, have been cared for, by a woman like you. I am going now. My heart is raging with love and honor for you; I want to get out underneath the sky; feel the cold upon my face so that I shall know I am not dreaming. Goodbye, dear, until I send you away from me—send you away, not with wretchedness and despair in my heart, but with hope, and light, and happiness—tomorrow!" and he pressed her hands, gazed at her with wide, kindling eyes, and went reeling from the room, as one who seeks a secure footing after many days at sea.
Laura, by design, was standing in the doorway of her sitting room when he passed unsteadily out.
"Well?" she said to him. "Did the 'disparity' number win, John?"