The oddest contrasts fall over life’s most sacred moments. The tone of her words thrilled him, set every fibre tingling, yet he thought of dry conjugations and declensions, conned over and over again in school, and he was conscious of vague wonderment that those things really, actually, had a meaning. Meaning? He believed now that no words in 517English could tell so much. He did not have to understand them. They bore the flesh and blood, the passion and the soul, of a woman who told him that she loved him.
With a hesitant gentleness which bespoke the deep and reverent awe in his yearning, he pressed her head back against its resting place. A man can do without words of any kind. She grew very quiet there. The tense quivering ceased, and she crept closer, and at last she sighed, purringly, contentedly.
But of course there was more which she simply had to say. And this time, when she raised her eyes, they were calm and earnest, and her beautiful forehead was white and very grave. “Do you know, dear,” she said, “I should not care to live, I would not have lived, if what he said were–were–” But the eyes filled with tears, and angry with herself, she planted her fists against him to be free, and as impulsively crying, “Oh, my–my own dear lad!” she flung her arms about his neck again. “Oh, oh,” she moaned, “he said that you were dead!”
For the first time it dawned on Driscoll that all this must have had a cause, and for the first time since entering the room he remembered Boone.
“He told you–He––”
But Driscoll did not finish. Putting her from him he sprang to the door and flung it open. There he waited. Boone was outside, and Boone walked expectantly in. Without a word Driscoll raised his fist, drew it back, his cruel arm muscled to kill. Jacqueline saw his anger for her, terrible in murder. She threw herself upon him, got hold of the knotted fist, got it to her lips. Another woman, too, had darted between him and the other man, and she faced him. The gentle Berthe was become a little tigress.
“Not that, not that!” It was Jacqueline’s voice. “Listen, mon cheri, I–I thank him. Au contraire, I do! And–and you must, too!”
518Driscoll stared at all three, first at one, then at another. He floundered, stupefied. Here was this loving girl, clinging to him as though he might vanish, and he had left her that morning a disdainful beauty. Then here was this Meagre Shanks with his mysterious ten minutes, and here was this dumfounding product of those ten minutes. Driscoll put forth an open hand.
“Dan,” he muttered incoherently, “you’re a–a wonder, too!”
Boone clenched the proffered hand in his own. “I never once thought, Jack,” he said earnestly, contritely, “never once, that she cared so ever-lastingly much.”