This brusqueness, his haste, his sternness troubled her more and more. They were alone in the corridor that led to the committee-room. She stopped, holding him back with her strong young arms. He had hardly looked at her till then. She had changed in the months since he had seen her. Womanly dignity was mingled with the high spirit that had inspired the child. Her garb, her new mien made her beauty brilliant.
"I never lied to you yet, Big Boy," she cried. "I came here because I was hungry for a sight of you. Then I would go back to my work comforted. Now my conscience is clear. Take me where you will."
In that moment his heart was revealed to him. In the stress of new emotions he understood himself at last. He understood that the love which mates, which sweeps away all calculation, which welds, trusts, and never pauses to analyze or compute, is love that disdains mere admiration of intellect or lure of beauty.
His quiet nature had depths. They had never been stirred till then. The child-love had been budding there ready for blossom. It had been fed by faith and ripened by association. Passion now brought it to fruition. Madeleine Presson had appealed only to one side of him. This girl rounded out the whole philosophy of love. She was not a divinity. His nature did not crave divinity. In his strength, sincerity, ingenuousness, his man's soul, primitive as the free woods, required the mate—one to be cherished and protected. And so, now, when all his soul was stirred, this girl, so bitterly in need of protection—the girl whom the years had endeared to him—came into his heart to reign there.
Words, emotion choked him. But he could not wait, then. She saw something in his eyes she had never seen there till that moment. But before she could understand he carried her along with him.
"Come! I can't wait!" he cried.
When he flung open the door of the committee-room the men in it were standing in silence. Presson had picked up the "Thornton Bill" and was reading it, scowling. Whatever Linton had said, it was plain that the father of Madeleine Presson had just found something which diverted his attention from family matters.
Harlan shut the door behind. He locked it. He stepped away from the girl, leaving her standing there. She was a picture to confute slander.
The chairman gazed at her in astonishment. He had not expected such prompt incarnation of the topic.
"I know what foul lies have just been uttered in this room by that fellow!" Harlan leaned forward and drove an accusatory finger at Linton. "Now here stands the woman you have insulted. Look at her, you lying hound! There's only one thing you can do! Acknowledge yourself a liar and apologize!"