"No!" His voice shook. "Thank God, I don't have to try any longer."
It was no passive creature he took then into his eager arms, it was one who raised her own with the rush of self-abandonment which made his joy complete. Long as he had loved her he had not dreamed of her as ever giving herself to any lover so splendidly. If he had dreamed—he realized with a strange feeling at the heart—he could never have withstood….
It was to be hoped that Mrs. Brainard, in the other room, had found a book upon the table which interested her or, hungry for food as she had professed herself to be, she must inevitably have found the time pass slowly before she was summoned to her promised supper.
Out in the old, dark, oak-walled kitchen, Brown was still putting questions. He had placed his lady in a chair, and he sat on a little old-fashioned "cricket" before her, one that he had found in the house when he came and had carefully preserved for its oddity. It brought him just where he could look up into her eyes. One of her hands was in both his; he lifted it now and then to his lips as he talked. The packages of eggs and lettuce and bakery cakes stood untouched and forgotten on the table. If Helena remembered to be hungry, it was not worth the spoiling of this hour to demand to be fed.
"Can I possibly make you comfortable here?" was one of his questions.
"Don't you think I look as if I might help you make us both comfortable?" was her answer.
Brown looked at the plain little white blouse, at the simple blue serge skirt, then on down to the foot which showed below the hem of the skirt.
"Is this the sort of shoe that working-women wear?" he inquired skeptically.
Helena laughed. "Neither Mrs. Brainard nor I could bring ourselves to that," she owned. "And since you and I are only to play at being poor—"
"We can afford to keep you in fine shoe feather? Yes, I think we can. But you are going to miss a world of things you are used to, my queen—and not only a world of things—the world itself."