"Wayne!" she said curiously, staring at him, startled and a little afraid of she knew not what. "Wayne! What is it?"
"What is it?" Shandon's voice had dropped lower, was so hoarse that it did not seem Wayne Shandon's voice at all. "It is just this—"
He broke off as sharply as she had done and moving swiftly as though driven by some great compelling force which dominated him he stooped and swept her up into his arms. She felt the tightening muscles as he drew her close, closer to him; felt a little tremor running through his whole body; heard the beating of his heart; was drawn nearer to him than she had ever been drawn to a man in her life; realised for the first time in a flutter of many sweeping emotions how superbly big and powerful the man was, how almost god-like in the beauty of his muscular manhood … and then she knew nothing but the wonderful fact that he had kissed her full upon her quivering red mouth.
"My God, Wanda, how I love you!" he exclaimed with sudden wild, unleashed vehemence. "Do you hear me?" He was holding her a little away from him, his arms still shaking about her shoulders, his voice frightening her with the vibrant fierceness that had leaped into it, the love in his eyes glowing like fire. "I love you so that I'd go through Hell to have you, to have you for mine, all mine! So that I might fight a man for daring to look at you, that I might kill a man for harming you! Wanda, girl, I tell you that I love you! Do you understand? Do you know what that means? What love means? When a man loves a woman as I do?"
Always a man of impulse, a man who through years of habit had grown to act swiftly in little things and big things alike, Wayne Shandon flung into impassioned words the emotions which swept through his soul and brain. The sight of Wanda Leland, grown into the sweet, pure beauty of early womanhood, had stirred him to the depths. Her casual mention of other men, Garth, and Sledge Hume, had displeased him so vaguely that he had not fully understood or cared why. And then the light allusion to the danger of death in which she had stood had been the spark in the powder train of his love, his words exploded from the seething consciousness newly awakened, fires long smouldering unsuspected in his heart burst forth in a mighty conflagration of emotion.
Throughout his whole being there was a strange, new, throbbing buoyancy, the gladness that sings, the joy that sparkles. The elixir of life had been set suddenly before him. He did not taste and put it away as some men do; he did not sip sparingly and temperately; but he drank deeply and swiftly so that the wine of love tingled through his blood, made his brain reel and his heart grow hot. It intoxicated his soul and his senses with a rare, glorious intoxication.
He tossed his head back, holding her still a little further from him, and looked into her eyes. His own had changed now, changed utterly in their eloquent speech. They had been fierce, now they grew wonderfully tender. They had been clear and bright and eager; and now they were misty. The first flame of love had leaped through his blood; now an infinite yearning, as gentle as tears, rose from his heart. Love had clamoured, now love was whispering. Love had been insistent; now it pleaded. It had been masterful; now it knelt.
"You love me—like that?"
The tumult in the man's soul had awakened conflicting emotions under the troubled, tremulous breasts. She looked at him with wide, clear eyes, wondering. A miracle, the old, eternal, primal miracle, had entered her life. She had looked down, laughingly, on a careless boy; she had been gripped mightily in the arms of a being new to her, a man who loved. From the clear blue of her life's sky there had leaped out a flash of lightning that filled the universe with its light and heat. They had been two gay loitering children; now she saw the man shaken in the gust of his passion.
"You love me—like that?"