"Love! What mockery to mention that now!" she cried chokingly. "It's monstrous!"
"I—I—" He was making an effort to keep his nerves under control.
This time the stiffening elbow failed. With a lurching abruptness he swung his right hand around and seized the wrist of that trembling, injured hand that would not be still. She could not fail to notice the movement, and the sight was a magic that struck anger out of her.
"Lanny, I am hurting you!" she cried miserably.
"A little," he said, will finally dominant over its servant, and he was smiling as when, half stunned and in agony—and ashamed of the fact—he had risen from the débris of cloth and twisted braces. "It's all right," he concluded.
She threw back her arms, her head raised, with a certain abandon as if she would bare her heart.
"Lanny, there have been moments when I would have liked to fly to your arms. There have been moments when I have had the call that comes to every woman in answer to a desire. Yet I was not ready. When I really go it must be in a flame, in answer to your flame!"
"You mean—I—."
But if the flame were about to burst forth she smothered it in the spark.
"And all this has upset me," she went on incoherently. "We've both been cruel without meaning to be, and we're in the shadow of a nightmare; and next time you come perhaps all the war talk will be over and—oh, this is enough for to-day!"