“Then let me come soon, Denny,” she begged. “Can’t it be soon? Oh, I’m going to keep them!” One hand searched behind her to fall lightly upon the package upon the table. “They’re––they’re so 60 beautiful that I don’t believe I could ever give them back. But do we have to wait any longer––do we? I can take care of him, too.”
Vehemently she tilted her head toward the little drab cottage across under the opposite hill.
“He hardly ever notices when I come or go. I––I want to come, Denny. I’m lonesome, and––and––” her eyes darkened and swam with fear as she stared beyond him into the dusky corner near the door, “why can’t I come now, before some time––when it might be––too late?”
He reached up and took her hands from his shoulders and held them in front of him, absently contemplating their rounded smoothness. She bent closer, trying to read his eyes, and found them inscrutable. Then his fingers tightened.
“And be like them?” he demanded, and the words leaped out so abruptly that they were almost harsh. “And be like all the rest,” he reiterated, jerking his head backward, “old and thin, and bent and worn-out at thirty?” A hard, self-scathing note crept into the words. “Why, it––it took me almost a month––even to buy these!”
He in turn reached out and laid a hand upon the bundle behind her. But she only laughed straight back into his face––a short, unsteady laugh of utter derision.
“Old?” she echoed. “Work! But I––I’d have 61 you, Denny, wouldn’t I?” Again she laughed in soft disdain. “Clothes!” she scoffed. And then, more serious even than before: “Denny, is––is that the only reason, now?”
The gleam that always smoldered in Denny Bolton’s eyes whenever he remembered the tales they told around the Tavern stove of Old Denny’s last bad night began to kindle. His lips were thin and straight and as colorless as his suddenly weary face as he stood and looked back at her. She lifted her hands and put them back upon his shoulders.
“I’m not afraid––any more––to chance it,” she told him, her lips trembling in spite of all she could do to hold them steady. “I’m never afraid, when I’m with you. It––it’s only when I’m alone that it grows to be more than I can bear, sometimes. I’m not afraid. Does it––does it have to stay there any longer, in the corner, Denny? Aren’t we sure enough now––you and I––aren’t we?”
He stopped back a pace––his big body huge above her slenderness––stepped away from the very nearness of her. But as she lifted her arms to him he began to shake his head––the old stubborn refusal that had answered her a countless number of times before.