“I was thinking of you when I came into this room,—not ten minutes ago,—and suddenly I saw you. I was terrified. I knew then that my dreams were coming true,—I knew it, and I don't know why I did not run away. Any self-respecting, modest girl would have done so. But what did I do? I, a supposedly sensible, well-brought-up—”
“You caught me trying to run away,” he broke in. “I give you my word, my heart was in my throat all the time I was working over that fire,—scared stiff with the fear that you would come in and bayonet me with one of those icicle looks of yours. And see what really happened!”
They were silent for some time, staring into the fire. Suddenly his arm tightened; he drew a sharp breath. She looked up quickly.
“Why are you frowning?”
“I was just thinking,” he replied after a moment's hesitation.
He gave a queer little jerk of his head, as if casting off something that bothered him. Into his paradise had slipped the memory of a night not long since when he held the yielding, responsive form of another woman in his arms, and felt the thrill of an ignoble passion surging through his veins. The kiss of the sensualist had burned on his lips for days; even to this hour it had clung to them; he was never free from the fire it had started in his imagination. And always on Olga's red, alluring lips lurked the reminder that she had not forgotten; in her eyes lay the light of expectancy.
“Of whom?” asked Ruth, not coyly, but with a directness that startled him. She seemed to have divined that his thoughts were not of her in that brief, flitting instant.
“Of myself,” he answered, quite truthfully.
She laid her hand on his. “I forbid you to think of any one but me,” she said.
He was silent for a moment. “I shall never think of any one but you, Ruth Clinton,” he said earnestly. “You have nothing to fear.”