"Behaved ourselves! Lynn!"
"Oh, forgive me! I didn't mean to say that."
Summerlad's look mirrored a real and poignant contrition as he saw her colouring with affronted sensibility, drawing back from him, momentarily slipping farther beyond his reach. "Linda!" he implored—"don't look at me that way. I can't help what your husband thinks, can I? I didn't ask him to come out here and be the pest he is, did I? After all, what have I done? I lied about Nelly—yes—but only to spare your feelings. I didn't want you to think people might be talking about you, stepping out with a married man. If you'd thought that, you'd have given me my walking papers and ... and I couldn't do without you, dear—I can't! The others never mattered much, they sort of came and went, mostly I didn't care which they did. But you're so different, you're so wonderful, everything a fellow dreams about. I've never known anybody like you, never will again. If I lost you I'd—I'd—I think I'd go out of my mind!"
And suddenly, before she could stir to escape, he caught her to him and held her fast.
"Linda, sweetheart; don't be angry with me. I've tried so hard to be good enough for you. And you—you've loved me, too! Don't let this rotten accident spoil everything for us. If you love me—and you know I love you—what does anything matter? What if we are both married? What difference need that make? Love can still be sweet...."
She made no show of opposition, only drew back her head to cheat his lips; but when she tried to brave his eyes, thinking to read therein his heart and mind, she winced from recognition of the hunger that informed them, hunger that she wittingly had whetted, hunger such as she herself had too often known of late, like warm wine running in one's veins....
But always ere now she had fortified and shriven her conscience with the belief that they were of one mind, it must and would be Reno first....
Now Reno no longer held forth any promise of salvation, of the law's sanction, the church's countenance. Even though she were to find there her own freedom, Lynn would still be bound. It wasn't in reason to hope that the woman who had rejected his money would listen to other arguments. Today and henceforward it must be all for love or ... nothing ... a break final and irreparable....
And for all the shock she had suffered, for all the wrong Lynn had done and the pain of which his ill-faith had been the cause, the love she had given the man still was dear, dangerously sweet and disarming. Already she was aware of anxiety to grasp at excuses for him, to comfort the ache in her heart with the thought that she was according charity to a dear transgressor, already she felt her strength to resist being sapped, flesh and spirit succumbing anew to the spell he knew too well how to weave.
She wrestled with a weakness stronger than all her strength. They couldn't go on like this.... Lynn hadn't said it, but they both knew it ... without going farther.... Even Reno couldn't save her now, only the instinct of self-preservation latent in her, not even that if she failed to find in herself the will to hear and be guided by its admonishments. It was make or break....