"You mean you're not afraid to marry me?"
"No. I'm not afraid."
He felt her smile flicker in the darkness.
It was then that in the darkness he drew her to him, and she let herself be drawn, her breast to his breast and her head against his shoulder. And as she rested there she trembled, she shivered with delight and fear.
CHAPTER XXIX
He had seen her home. At her door in the quiet Avenue he had held her in his arms again and kissed her. Her eyes shone at his under the lamplight.
He went back slowly, reviving the sweet sense of her.
A great calm had followed his excitement. He was sustained by an absolute certainty of happiness. It was in his grasp, nothing could take it from him. He would raise the rest of the money on Monday. He would see that lawyer on Wednesday. Then he would take proceedings. Once he had set the machinery going it couldn't be stopped. The law simply took the thing over, took it out of his hands, and he ceased to be responsible.
So he argued; for at the back of his mind he saw more clearly than ever (he could not help seeing) something that might stop it all, disaster so great, so overwhelming that when it came his affairs would be swallowed up in it. In the face of that disaster it would be indecent of him to have any affairs of his own, or at any rate to insist on them. But he refused to dwell on this possibility. He persuaded himself that his father was better, that he would even recover, and that the business would recover too. For the last six months Ponting had been running it with an assistant under him, and between them they had done wonders with it, considering.