“Did you want me?” she asked simply, and Christian answered “Yes!” just as simply, like children crying to and answering each other, and a change he did not understand came over her face, as if some hidden glory had set its lamp to her eyes and caught her whole soul in a quiver of light. She turned from him swiftly and dropped on the ground, hiding her face on her knees.
Puzzled and slightly alarmed, he stepped to her side and bent over her with an anxious question, and she shook her head without raising it; then threw out her arms and looked up at him with the same brilliant eyes.
“I’ll tell you presently—presently!” she said. “Oh, Christian, you’ve freed me—given me my right to my dream. All my life I thought I was stealing, and it was mine all the time! It’s mine now as long as I live.”
She gave a low laugh of pure ecstasy, and then, meeting his bewildered glance, came back to the reality of things and to the memory of all that had occurred since they had last met. The climb up the park had wearied him and set violet shadows beneath his eyes, tired lines in his thin face. His hands were thin, too, she noticed, pallid with the whiteness of hands that have laid helpless on a counterpane, and in his eyes was still the patient, inward look that comes with dangerous illness. And beyond all that there was an air of desolation strange in so young a man—almost the look of one bowing a beaten head to Fate. Her victorious gladness struck against it, wondering, and with a heart charged to the brim with pity, she stretched out both her hands.
“Oh, how ill you look!” she exclaimed. “How terribly ill and miserable and lonely! What can I do to help you, my dear, my poor dear?”
And Christian, with her face blurred to his eyes, conscious only of his desperate need of her and of her strength, clung to her tender hands and dropped beside her, hiding his face on her lap.
“Debbie, why did you send me away?” he asked, from his shelter. “Couldn’t you feel that I was yours, even if I didn’t know it myself? You’re all I’ve got in the world, and all I want. You mustn’t send me away again!”
“I’ll keep you till the stars fall!” she answered almost fiercely, closing her arms round him. “I sent you away because I was afraid—afraid for your happiness. I lied to you, but I loved you all the time. I lied to you because I loved you, oh, blind and dearest heart!”
She stooped and laid her lips to his hair, and out of the spring magic every voice cried to her that she had ever loved; the chattering water-voice that has the note of rung silver in it; the liquid gold of the thrush, the diamond-clear whistle of the blackbird; and always the lamb’s appeal and the mother’s anxious answer. The mighty dignity of the ancient trees, foiled by the eternal freshness of springing grass, the smell of the earth, the press of the turf—all that stood for the heritage of Crump reaching forward and so far behind, fused for the moment in the young, pathetic figure at her feet, summoned her soul from the hidden covert where it had crouched so long, afraid; and Christian, looking at her at last with clear eyes, knew that he saw her for the first time.
“Tell me what it all means,” he said, “why you came to-night—your real self behind the mask—Stanley—everything!”