Her first alarm was followed immediately by such a chaos of deeper emotions that the cry died away on her lips. She stood looking at him with shining eyes from behind the fringe of her tall, peaked hood, then, in a voice as low as the wind, she spoke his name. At the same moment she laid her hand on the edge of the seat, either obeying the impulse that would draw her to him, or because she must otherwise have fallen.
Since their last meeting, their night together in the shelter of the half-finished building, he had resolutely put her from his thoughts. He had supposed the victory won, and never more so than on this very day, when self-interest and moral obligations had marshalled such invincible arguments before his mind. If he had seen her from a distance, if she had been on the sidewalk instead of in his very path, would he have had time to wrestle with his temptation and to overthrow it? Would he have whipped up his horse and passed her by without a look of recognition? But the hypothesis is contrary to the fact, and suggests a fruitless speculation. It would seem that his evil genius had planned deliberately to put his resolution to the supreme test, first by filling him with arrogant self-confidence, then by firing his blood with a triumph over his enemy, and finally by placing within the reach of his hand the very woman whom most of all, in his heart of hearts, he longed to see.
As she stood there before him, all her soul concentrated in her eyes, her lips apart in breathless waiting on his will, it seemed that trouble had never put a marring finger upon her beauty; and suddenly he knew the overmastering hunger of his nature. This was the woman that loved him without question, the woman he wished to take into his arms and carry off. The place and time were propitious. Already the sun had set—there was no one in sight—and just beyond the ridge the open country beckoned.
"Lena," he said, his voice vibrant with reckless abandonment to his desire, "jump in here, quick!"
There was no previous greeting, no inquiry or explanation, no dalliance with emotion. His first words were a command, her inevitable response was to obey. Now, as always, she threw the whole responsibility upon him. And Emmet felt equal to the burden. He was like a god, knowing good and evil. He meant to do good in the main, but just now it was his pleasure to deviate a little. To-morrow he would come back into the straight road and hold it to the end. This resolve gave him a peculiar exhilaration, a special license for the definite indulgence.
The next moment she was nestling close to his side, borne swiftly along as in a dream to the music of the bells. Putting his left arm behind her shoulders, he drew the robe up across her face to ward off the whistling wind. For some time she was content to lie thus in silence, lost in a sense of his strong embrace and in a consciousness of the romance that had come to her so unexpectedly out of loneliness and despair. This was her own lover, come back to her again, but he had never come thus before; and she remembered with a thrill that he was now the mayor of Warwick, taking his pleasure in his own sleigh. She wondered whether he had admired her golf cape; she had no need to wonder what he thought of its wearer. As if to reassure her on this very point, he spoke aloud.
"Lena, I had clean forgot you were so pretty."
"What did you say, Tom?" she asked, thrusting her head above the robe to hear again the praise she feigned to miss.
"I had forgotten," he repeated, "that you were so confoundedly pretty."
"I should think you would have forgotten it," she retorted. "You gave yourself time enough to forget almost anything."