“Don’t say that, Swickey. Davy’s true blue, but I’m glad there’s nothing—like that—between you.”
She bent her head and he heard her sobbing.
“There, little girl, I’m sorry I made you feel badly. Come, don’t cry. I love you, Swickey.” He leaned toward her and she allowed him to take her in his arms. “Listen, dear, you don’t belong up here in this ungodly country. It’s good to come to, but not to stay. I want you to come home with me.”
The soft roar of the distant river pulsed faintly in her ears. She was worn with an unsatisfied yearning that seemed almost fulfilled as she found a momentary content in his arms. With a passiveness that in her was pitiful, she let him kiss her unresponsive lips. The hunger of his desire burned her unanswering passiveness to life as she shuddered and drew back, her hands against him, thrusting him from her.
“No! No! Not that!”
As he gazed stupidly at her, a dim outline took shape behind her bowed shoulders. Then the sound of footsteps as she turned, and the figure of David passed across the strip of light paving the grass in front of Avery’s doorway.
“But, Swickey!” His voice trembled, and he held out his arms imploringly.
“No, Wallie. I must go now. It was wrong. You shouldn’t have made me,” she continued, with a feminine inconsistency that almost made him smile. “I like you, Wallie, but not that way. Oh, if you knew, you’d understand. But you can’t. I dreamed—I made myself dream it was—” she hesitated.
“David,” said Bascomb. “Now I understand.”
With a gracious inclination of his head and a touch of his former lightness he bade her good-night. “I’m short-sighted, you know,” he said, in humorous mockery of himself.