“I rather think you had—that power, dear.”
He laughed contentedly as a man may who shifts all responsibility for an indiscretion to a force stronger than his own volition.
“You see,” she went on as if seeking to make illogic seem logical. “From the first—I couldn’t think of you except with storm thoughts. I couldn’t keep my heart quiet, when I was with you.”
“At first,” he reminded her, “you wanted to kill me. I heard you confiding to Rover.”
Her eyes grew seriously deep and undefensive in their frankness. It was the candor of a woman’s pride in conquest.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said almost fiercely, “that I wouldn’t almost rather kill you than—lose you to any other girl.”
Vaguely and as yet remotely, Spurrier’s consciousness was pricked with a forecast of reality’s veto, but the present spoke in passion and the future whispered weakly in platitudes.
“You won’t lose me,” he protested. “I’m yours.”
“And yet,” went on Glory, “you seemed a long way off. You were the man who did big things in the world outside. You were—always cool and—calculating.”
“Glory,” his words came with the rush of impetuosity for already the whispers of warning were gaining in volume, and impulse was struggling for its new freedom, “the man you’ve seen to-day is one I haven’t known myself before. Chilled calculation and self-repression have been the articles of my creed. I’ve 156 been crusted with those obsessions like a ship’s hull with barnacles. Did you know that when vessels pass through the Panama Canal, the barnacles drop off?”