He stood in the doorway—tall, lean, handsome, forceful with a touch of asceticism—and smiled to the corridor.
“Here we are!” he said, his voice on a note of happiness. “At last!”
He stretched out his arms to the girl upon the threshold. She came into the light—tall almost as he, long fur coat half-open over her tailor-made costume, finely modelled head poised in a graceful, winsome upturn of the face, smiling at him in a radiance of eyes and mouth—and, on the movement of an irresistible impulse, cast herself into his embrace.
“At last!” she echoed. “Oh, Jim, dear!—at last—at long last!”
He held her, and she snuggled into his shoulder, face upturned to his, drawing his kisses down to her with the magnetism of her lips.
The quaint enamel clock on the mantelpiece ticked, just heard, the passing seconds of eternity, the only sound in the silence of their union.
Then, with the long breath of recovery from the timeless swoon of a kiss prolonged to its uttermost limit, she turned her head slowly to gaze about the room.
“Oh, Jim!” she said, in affectionate reproach, “and you told me you were a poor man!”
He shrugged his shoulders, his lips mobile in a little smile.