"Why should I wait?" he demanded almost fiercely.
"Because I ask you. Because—just now—to be loved like that is more than
I can bear. Will you—can you—kiss me only, once, and go?"
He held her in his arms. He gazed long and burningly upon her. In the end he stopped and with reverence he kissed her. "I am going, Avery," he said.
She opened her eyes to him. "God bless you, my own Piers!" she murmured softly, and laid her cheek for a moment against his sleeve ere he took his arm away.
As for Piers, he went from her as if he feared to trespass, and her heart smote her a little as she watched him go. But she would not call him back. She went instead to one of the great bay windows and leaned against the framework, gazing out. He was very good to her in all things, but there were times when she felt solitude to be an absolute necessity. His vitality, his fevered desire for her, wore upon her nerves. His attitude towards her was not wholly natural. It held something of a menace to her peace which disquieted her vaguely. She had a feeling that though she knew herself to be all he wanted in the world, yet she did not succeed in fully satisfying him. He seemed to be perpetually craving for something further, as though somewhere deep within him there burned a fiery thirst that nothing could ever slake. Her lightest touch seemed to awake it, and there were moments when his unfettered passion made her afraid.
Not for worlds would she have had him know it. Her love for him was too deep to let her shrink; and she knew that only by that love did she maintain her ascendancy, appealing to his higher nature as only true love can appeal. But the perpetual strain of it told upon her, and that night she felt tired in body and soul.
The great bedroom behind her with its dark hangings and oak furniture seemed dreary and unhome-like. She viewed the ancient and immense four-poster with misgiving and wondered if Queen Elizabeth had ever slept in it.
After a time she investigated Piers' room beyond, and found it less imposing though curiously stiff and wholly lacking in ordinary cheery comfort. Later she discovered the reason for this grim severity of arrangement. No woman's touch had softened it for close upon half a century.
She went back to her own room and dressed. Piers had wanted her to have a maid, but she had refused until other changes should be made in the establishment. There seemed so much to alter that she felt bewildered. A household of elderly menservants presented a problem with which she knew she would find it difficult to deal.
She put the matter gently before Piers that night, but he dismissed it as trivial.