“Aha! So I do come in all the same.”
Loud cries of “Jinny! Jinny!” now intimated, like the silence of the rescued poultry, that the barge was preparing to cast off.
“Just coming!” she called loudly. “Good-bye, you sullen, runty idiot. They can’t wait any longer.”
“Good-bye!” he growled.
Her look was mischievous as she ran off. But that he could not see: he could only hear the noisy banging of the opposite door. He had already forgotten his wager. But by hook or crook she meant to lure him out, if only for an instant. That was why she came as noisily back and thumped at his door again. “You can’t be left without food,” she said.
“That’s my business. Let me be.”
“Not till I know you won’t starve. There’s Ravens’ dinner-packet you can have.”
“Take it away,” he roared.
Her eyes twinkled. He had played into her hands, empty as they were. “I won’t take it away,” she said. There was a sound as of angry dumping outside his door. Then the opposite door banged and silence fell.
After a moment Will, drawing a sigh, half of relief, half of despair, opened his door and the next moment—he never knew how it had happened exactly (still less did he realize that there was no dinner-packet there at all), but since he had only one arm it seemed to him afterwards it could not be he that had enfolded her, even if he had done so with his eyes when her merry mocking face shone so trickily upon the landing, while Jinny always felt that it was precisely the arm out of action that had come round her, just as it was his not coming on a horse that had made her feel Passion’s force—but there they were (by some irresistible flood) in each other’s arms, with Jinny’s flower-soft cheek pressed with a wonderful warmth to his own, and her silvery little voice crooning: “Oh, my poor Will! Oh, my poor Will!” He knew immediately that there had been nothing like this in all his motley experience, nothing at once so pure, so sweet, so tender. This was the love that lifted, not degraded.