"They are better off in the storage warehouse," he interrupted, trying to steel himself against her rather plaintive friendliness.
"Don't you intend to shake hands with me?" she asked suddenly. "I am so glad that you have come home,—come back, I mean,—and—" She advanced with her hand extended.
It was a perilous moment for both of them when she laid her hand in his. The blood in both of them leaped to the thrill of contact. The impulse to clasp her in his arms, to smother her with kisses, to hold her so close that nothing could ever unlock his arms, was so overpowering that his head swam dizzily and for an instant he was deprived of vision. How he ever passed through that crisis in safety was one of the great mysteries of his life. She was his for the taking! She was ready.
Their hands fell apart. A chill swept through the veins of both,—the ice-cold chill of a great reaction. They would go on loving each other, wanting each other, perhaps forever, but a moment like the one just past would never come again. Bliss, joy, complete satisfaction might come, but that instant of longing could never be surpassed.
He was very white. For a long time he could not trust himself to speak. The fight was a hard one, and it was not yet over. She was a challenge to all that he tried to master. He wondered why there was a smile in her lovely, soft eyes, while in his own there must have been the hardness of steel. And he wondered long afterward how she could have possessed the calmness to say:
"Simmy must have been insane with joy. He has talked of nothing else for days."
But he did not know that in her secret heart she was crying out in ecstasy: "God, how I love him—and how he loves me!"
"He is a good old scout," said he lamely, hardly conscious of the words. Then abruptly: "I can't stay, Anne. I came down to tell you that—that I was a dog to say what I did in my note to you. I knew the construction you would put upon the—well, the injunction. It wasn't fair. I led you to believe that if you came down here to live that sometime I would—"
"Just a moment, Braden," she interrupted, steadily. "You are finding it very difficult to say just the right thing to me. Let me help you, please. I fear that I have a more ready tongue than you and certainly I am less agitated. I confess that your note decided me. I confess that I believed my coming here to live would result in—well, forgiveness is as good a word as any at this time. Now you have come to me to say that I have nothing to gain by living in this house, that I have nothing to gain by living in a place which revolts and terrifies me,—not always, but at times. Well, you may spare yourself the pain of saying all that to me. I shall continue to live here, even though nothing comes of it, as you say. I shall continue to sit here in this rather enchanting place and wait for you to come and share it with me. If you—"
"Good God! That is just what I am trying to tell you that I cannot—"