He was so much older, so much wiser than the Horatia who, tired and pale, hardly heeded his talk.
“Oh, I’m frightened,” she cried, “all this arguing! If this happened afterwards——”
“I’d become a brute or you a shrew,” said Langley.
But what she had wanted was his denial that it would ever happen again.
“I’m afraid of you. You are hard and unyielding. You don’t bring me——”
“I don’t bring you rest or comfort,” he said bitterly. “But, my God, how I long to, Horatia. Only I love you too much to bring you false rest or comfort or to drug you with words. I too have come to fear myself. What have I to give you——”
They sat drearily fatigued, the paper-strewn table between them.
Horatia made no protest; she was or thought she was full of questioning herself. Yet what came next brought about in three breaths a vast surprise; one moment what Langley was saying sounded like a natural sequence, and the next all the values of life shifted, and they faced each other in a new, strange, graceless world.
“I want you to go away for a rest,” said Jim. “Go away and forget all this. Then if you never want to come back to me, it’s all right. But if you should, Horatia, I’ll be here—I’ll always be here—always waiting, always thankful for what you’ve done for me—what you’ve given me, and always knowing that it was far, far more than I deserved.”
It was youth, inexperienced girlhood that disregarded the magnificence of that appeal. Horatia was primitive, green enough to want to be overcome—to want to be forced into surrender. That he did not force her but left her path open seemed weakness—and something like coldness. An older woman would have known that it was strength and rare devotion.