“You have brought all this on your head through mixing in my miserable affairs,” she murmured.
He looked up quickly. “Oh, don’t say a thing like that!” he protested, hurt to the quick. “It seems to divide us. How can we be divided now? Your fate is my fate and mine yours!”
Loseis looked down, somewhat comforted. But she yearned for more explicit comfort still. “I wonder you do not hate me,” she whispered.
“Loseis!” he said sharply, “if you say such things to me, you will have me blubbering like Mary-Lou. That would be a nice thing!” And the tears actually stood in his eyes.
The sight of those tears was sweet to Loseis; but she went on perversely: “Sometimes I think you do hate me. You do not like to look at me any more. Always you turn your eyes away.”
Conacher turned his eyes away then. “The truth is, I can’t bear to look at you,” he murmured. “Such a child as you are, and so plucky and proud; never a word of complaint out of you. It drives me wild to think I can’t save you from this!”
Loseis glided swiftly around the table, and caught his head against her breast. “Ah, you blessed Paul!” she crooned, brooding over him. “I was just trying to make you say again that you loved me. You mustn’t grieve so over me. Think what it would be for me if you weren’t here!”
She dropped to her knees beside his chair. Speech would no longer serve to convey their feelings. They snatched a moment of poignant happiness out of the surrounding horror.
Finally Conacher, partly withdrawing himself from her arms, sat up straight. “This can’t go on!” he said, striking the table.
“What is in your mind?” she asked anxiously.