She turned away, very pale, her lips trembling.
“And you’d like me to come if I could—if I were free?”
He was close to her and looked down to see her face, his own hard, the bones of the jaw showing through the thin cheeks.
“You’d like me to?” he urged.
She nodded, her lips too dry to speak.
“O Rose!” he whispered, a whisper that seemed to melt the strength of her heart and make her unvanquished, maiden pride dissolve into feebleness.
He leaned nearer and, taking her by the arms just above the elbows, drew her to himself, into an embrace, close and impassioned, that crushed her against him. She submitted passively, in a dizzy dream that was neither joy nor pain, but was like a moment of drugged unreality, fearful and beautiful. She was unconscious of his lips pressed on her hair, but she felt the beating of his heart beneath her cheek.
They stood thus for a moment, rising above time and space. They seemed to have been caught up to a pinnacle of life where the familiar world lay far beneath them. A joy, divine and dreamy, held them clasped together, motionless and mute, for a single point of time beyond and outside the limitations that had heretofore bound them.
Bill Cannon had a question to ask his daughter and he came down stairs to the parlor where she had told him she was going. He had dressed himself for supper, the most important item of his toilet being a pair of brown leather slippers. They were soft and made no sound, and stepping briskly in them he advanced to the half-open parlor door, pushed it open and entered the quiet room. On the hearth-rug before the fire stood a woman clasped in the arms of Dominick Ryan.
Though the face was hidden, the first glance told him it was his daughter. The young man’s head was bowed on hers, his brown hair rising above the gleaming blondness of hers. They were absolutely motionless and silent. For an amazed moment the father stared at them, then turned and tiptoed out of the room.