“It is, with me,” breathed Innes. Their voices were low as though they were in church.
“And you think it isn’t, with me!” Rickard stood before her. “Is it because I trust you, I wonder? That I, loving you, love to have the others love you, too? Don’t you suppose I know how it is with the rest, MacLean; how it was with Estrada? Should I be jealous? Why, I’m not. I’m proud! Isn’t that because I know you, know the fine steady heart of you? You hated me at first—and I am proud of that. I don’t love you enough?” He knelt at her feet, not listening to her pleading. He bent down and kissed one foot; then the other. “I love them!” The face he raised to her Innes had never seen before. He pressed a kiss against her knee. “That, too! It’s mine. I’ve not said my prayers since I was a boy. I shall say them again, here, you teaching me.” His kisses ran up her arm, from the tips of her limp fingers. His mouth, close to hers, stopped there. He whispered:
“You—kiss me, my girl!”
Slowly, unseeingly, as though drawn by an external will, her face raised to his; slowly, their lips met. His arms were around her; the world was blotted out.
Innes, minutes later, put her mouth against his ear. It was the Innes he did not know, that he had seen with others, mischievous, whimsical, romping as a young boy with MacLean on the Delta.
“I love—red,” she whispered. “And heat and sunshine. But I love blue, on you; and cold, if it were with you,—and the rest of the differences—”
He caught her to him. “There are not going to be any differences!”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.