"Maybe." At least, whether she knew it or not, she loved his serenity. "Maybe—and maybe I'm an exception too."
He sat very still. She had turned away once more.
"You'll be back again in the spring?" he asked with that gentleness he saved for her alone.
"I hope—I think so." The smallness of her voice angered her. She feigned a short, carefree laugh. "Unless I am too busy. Getting married seems to become a more and come complicated problem of proper costuming, doesn't it, with every passing season!"
She couldn't have told why she said it; she was trying to think of something else to say which would be kinder by far. And then, half lifting her, he had swung her around to him. For a moment he held her, face close to that small, frightened face buried in its deep collar, while she struggled uselessly against those hard arms which tried not to hurt her. Her lips continued to rebel, long after her eyes had closed—long after body and brain were quiescent.
"You mustn't!" she gasped. "Oh, I can't let you … the moon … we—we're sure to be seen!"
His lips on hers silenced that last incoherent resistance. She sat, wavy brown head bowed, when he had set her free.
"I was going to ask you not to forget!" There was no weariness now in his voice. "I had planned to ask you just that, a little ago, and it would have been a weak and useless request, wouldn't it? Any man who has to beg to be remembered is not the sort to remain long in any woman's brain. So I have taught you to remember, instead. You aren't going to forget, ever, now! You're coming back in the spring, and you're coming to stay! And now I'm telling you good-bye. It's time you were asleep."
He helped her to her feet. Together they turned—and Archibald Wickersham, tall to gauntness in the moonlight, was coming across toward them from the direction of the cabin. The girl's slim body stiffened, but Steve saw her chin come up. His own body grew lazier still, it seemed, in length and limb.
Wickersham's approaching steps were crisply precise; he stopped an arm's length in front of them, and his words were an echo of that last sentence of Steve's.