“Why should I want to put if off? Aren't we going to sit down and have a delightful talk? I want to hear all about Bob and Martha and all of them, and about your work since I saw you.”
“You want to hear all about those things, do you? I had the impression that we discussed them quite thoroughly while I was at supper. Still, I can go over them all again if you insist. It may take up another five minutes, and when one is fencing for time, even five minutes counts.”
It was his old way, with a vengeance. There was a saying of Arthur Chester's current among his and Burns's friends that it never was of any use to try to evade Red Pepper when once he had begun to fire upon your defenses. With his eyes searching you and his insolent tongue putting point blank questions to you, you might as well capitulate first as last.
There being no conceivable answer to this thrust about fencing for time, even for a woman experienced in replying skilfully to men under all sorts of conditions, Ellen Lessing was forced to look up or play the part of a shy girl. So she looked up, lifting her head bravely. There really was nothing else to do.
It was all in his face. He had not come all those hundreds of miles to pay her an evening call, nor did he mean to be put off longer. His eyes held hers: she could not withdraw them.
“It's odd,” he said, speaking slowly, “how like a magnet drawing a steel bar you've drawn me down here. Pull-pull-pull—an irresistible force. I wonder if the magnet feels the attraction, too? Could it pull so hard if it didn't?”
There was a long minute during which neither stirred—it might have been the counterpart of that minute, months back, when they had first observed each other. Recognition it was, perhaps, at the very first; there could be no question about the recognition now—it went deep.
Suddenly he slipped his right arm out of the sling. Before she could draw breath she was in the circle of his arms, but he had not touched her.
“Am I wrong?” he was saying. “Has it pulled both ways from the first?”
It must be as useless for the magnet to resist as for the bar. And when they, have come within a certain distance of each other—