[162]
] “Look—I can scrape it off—the beauty you love so! This is the way I’ll be in broad daylight, Bill. These lines—they’re the years I’ve stolen from you. They’re the real me—the me you don’t know. Do you want me now?”
He looked down on the face that in ten seconds had aged ten years. Dazedly he took in the circles under the eyes, the pinched lines from nostrils to mouth, the pallor of the lips. The luminous cream of her skin had given way to a whiteness that looked dead. All the exotic color of her—the color that fascinated him—was gone. It was almost as if some magic had wafted away the Naomi he knew, as if this were another woman.
He stood there gazing down on her, confused, silent before the revelation he could not quite compass. Only the eyes of his Naomi remained, infinitely sad, infinitely lovely, even with the heavy black gone from their straight lashes.
“You don’t want me now. You don’t want the woman I really am. Don’t stop to think! Don’t hesitate! Just answer me,” she whispered.
But he did stop to think. Without quite meeting the eyes raised to his, holding his own away from the face that seemed suddenly a strange one, he lifted her two trembling hands, put them against his lips.
“I’ve asked you to marry me, Naomi,” he said huskily. “I’m asking you again.”
“Thank you for that, boy dear. You—you’re just everything I thought you were. But I’m not going to take you up. Not now! If you want me six months [163] ]from now, come back for me. I’ll know then—that you need me. Only, dear—you won’t come.”
He looked straight at her then, letting himself see only the eyes which had not changed. And she knew before he spoke that he was bowing, without argument, to her verdict.
“I’ll come back for you,” he told her. “I won’t wait six months. You’ll see!”
She simply shook her head and no smile of hope touched her pale lips.