Suddenly a strange plea came pouring from his lips in a torrent of eager words, a plea that she all at once realized she had many times before dreaded—and laughed at herself for dreading.... She sat, scarcely breathing, with averted face. He ended abruptly, frightened at the sound of his own voice. She said nothing. Surely she understood him. What was she thinking?
She turned toward him at last, and he found himself looking into her black eyes that glowed like coals despite the mantle of dusk. Her parted lips closed in a tight line.
“Well,” she said, with slow emphasis, “if that’s what you mean, I’ll tell you this. I will never do such a thing.”
She was on her feet in an instant, her tall body like a statue of rebuke crushing him in its shadow.
“Come,” she said coldly.
“Yes,” he replied. “I’m sorry, I’m awfully sorry, Ellen.”
At that moment, as they started homeward from Florissant’s field with the darkness between them, her swishing, angry stride filling him with a new knowledge of mystery and awe, there was no doubt that they both meant what they said. But in Ellen a certain helplessness and fear were born. Struggle as she might from now on his very presence would be a menace, and his presence was more than ever a necessity. For the cry that he was uttering was one that her own heart understood.
So it happened that a few months later when the Osprey family were at a country hotel for the summer, he and Ellen met in the empty house and walked hand in hand through the rooms—her sworn promise whirling in his brain. She was stiff and awkward, but he was in high spirits, perhaps a little hysterical, fondly imagining he was entering upon a new paradise of experience....