But he interrupted her joyfully. “You don’t say, ‘I don’t love you‘—it’s only, ‘I was intending to be a nurse.’ I told you you couldn’t say it, because it isn’t true. You do love me, Rachel. Tell me so.”
Her hurried breathing was plainly perceptible now. She rose quickly, as if she could not bear the telltale lamplight upon her face any longer, and went hurriedly across the porch and down upon the lawn, into the starlight. He followed her, his pulses bounding.
“Oh, give up to me,” he said in her ear, his own breath coming fast. “You’ve been fighting it four years now—it’s no use. We were made for each other, and we’ve known it from the first. You stood heroically by your first promise—you gave him all you could; but that’s all over. You don’t have to be true to anything or anybody now but me. Give up, dear, and let me know what it feels like to have you pull a man toward you instead of pushing him away.”
They had reached the edge of the orchard—in deep shadow; and she stopped.
“I don’t know what I came down here for,” she said, in confusion.
“I do; you were running away. It’s your instinct to run away—I love you for it—it’s what first made me want to follow. But I can’t stand your running away much longer. Look, Rachel, can you see? I’m holding out my arms. Rachel—I can’t wait——”
For an instant longer she held out, while he stood silent, holding himself that he might have the long-dreamed-of joy of receiving her surrender. Then, all at once, he realised that it had been worth all his days of patient and impatient waiting, for turning to him at last she gave herself, with the abandon such natures are capable of showing when they yield after long resistance, into the arms which closed hungrily around her.
If anybody could have told what happened during the next twenty-four hours it would have been Juliet, for it was she who took the helm of affairs. She lay awake half the night, or what there was left of it after the doctor had come back with Rachel and told his friends what had happened and what was yet to happen, planning to make the hasty wedding as ideal as might be. She was a wonderful planner, and a most energetic and enthusiastic young matron as well, so by five in the afternoon she had accomplished all that had seemed to her good. Rachel’s part was only to see that her trunk was packed, her explanations offered and good-byes said, and her choice made of several exquisite white gowns which Juliet had had sent out from town.
“But I can’t be married in white, Mrs. Robeson,” she had said protestingly when Juliet had opened the boxes.