She shook her head and lowered it still more, until the sweeping curve of her bare neck, from the fine hair behind her ears to the back of the lace collar of her waist, was visible.
I cannot say what gave me the courage, but I bent over her and kissed her there, softly.
She looked up then without the slightest indication of either surprise or reproach.
“I liked that,” she whispered. “I didn’t know how I was going to tell you, but now I can.”
“Tell me what?” said I, in a choking voice.
“I love you,” she said. “I could not let you go. I thought last night that I could carry it through. I thought my duty was to stay with father. But it isn’t!”
“And you came here to tell me!” I gasped.
“Why not?” she said, with a catch in her voice. “I was afraid I would never see you again and I love you.”
When I think of all the sham there is among women, I treasure the memory of that simple little explanation. It was delivered as a full answer to all the conventionalities from here back to the time of the Serpent. It was spoken in a low but confident voice, with her hands upon her breast as if to calm the emotions within, and was directed toward me with the first frank exposure of her eyes which were still wet with tears.
“I have been miserable!” she said. “A woman is meant for some man, after all. And if she resists, she is resisting God! It all has been shown to me so clearly. And I knew that you were the one. There’s nothing else that makes any difference, and it sweeps you off your feet, so it must be nature, because it gave me the courage to telephone you and then try to find you and come here and wait and come again, and only nature can make any one go against all her habits and education. And I believe I’ll call you Jerry, if you still—”