She laughed with a half-sob.
“And just then,” she confessed deliciously, fluttering even now like a bird in the net, “I was beginning to get frightened of you. I felt you growing upon me, shadowing the horizon like the roc in the Arabian Nights. And the pain of the world was outside—in the great black night—calling to me in my slough of luxury.”
“You witch! Veil those eyes or I shall kiss them.”
She retreated.
“And why were you frightened of me?” he asked, tenderly.
She said, humbly, in little shy jerks: “I felt like in the sea this morning—one little atom, and the whole world against me, and my own weakness most of all.... I had prided myself on my swimming, and here was I being dragged under ... just like other girls ... a victim to the same ridiculous passion.”
“You delightful, candid creature! With me as the object?”
“Don’t be flippant now, Herbert.” How delicious his name sounded; it made amends for the rebuke! “You do understand me. Marriage is a second birth—voluntary, this time. It means accepting the universe, which was thrust upon one unasked.”
“It means making the best of it.”
“Oh, surely it means more. It means passing it on to others. But I surrender. I cannot live without you.”