If he had never known it before, he saw now that he had power over her; she could not resist that tone. "Well, I can't have you waking up like that, can I?"
"How would you have me wake?" asked Gardiner under his breath. He did not know what he expected, certainly not what he got: a swift turn, Lettice's face grim with feeling, her hands strongly drawing him down against her heart. She said not a syllable, but she held him there; and by and by she bent her graceful little neck and kissed him, the oddest little salute, it might have been called a peck, quite definite and not at all shy. Gardiner sprang up, flushed, impassioned, freeing himself from her arms to seize her in his own; then holding her off, with one lingering scruple—"Sure it's all right, Lettice? Sure you don't mind? I swear I'll take nothing you don't freely give—now or as your husband, nothing!"
"You are not all there is of most intelligent, are you?" said Lettice.
But if her tongue was perverse, her eyes were very soft—soft as only Lettice's eyes could be, always with a sparkle in their sweetness; and Gardiner was not critical. He was far too much occupied in making love, which he did very prettily, with a wealth of soft Spanish superlatives. He was drunk with happiness; his most enterprising dreams had never pictured such a surrender.
And Lettice was happy too. She knew now, she had learned in the moment when he woke with her name on his lips, that she was not afraid of passion; and if she had surprised him, he had surprised her too. She had thought she understood him pretty well; but she knew the worst better than the best, and the unselfishness, the delicacy, the almost fantastic chivalry of his love left her wondering and self-reproachful. So it happened that she finally surrendered the keys of her heart (with reserves: there were certain chambers which she really couldn't and wouldn't unlock, though she spoiled her Harry in every other conceivable way) with fewer regrets than she had thought possible, and with no misgivings at all. Her mind was at rest; she had built her house upon a rock.
We traveled in the print of olden wars,
Yet all the land was green,
And love we found, and peace,
Where fire and war had been.
March, 1920, on the Semois.