"No!" he said hoarsely, in a voice which told how spent he was by the struggle against himself. "Not that, Pat. Not for you. I'd give the soul out of my body to take you away with me. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes," she assented. She was daunted by the depths of passion which she had evoked. But only for the moment. The reaction brought back to her her hoydenish flippancy. "You don't for a minute think I'd go, do you? I was only wishing!"
"For God's sake, don't wish!"
"I do wish there weren't any laws. There ought to be a world where we could go when we're tired of this one, where laws and rules and things don't count, and we could come back when—when things got too hectic there."
"Fools think there is, and go there. But they don't come back."
"Let's pretend that there is such a world," she besought childishly, "and that we can go there whenever we want to. There you could kiss me as much as you liked whether people were around or not.... There's nobody around right now in this world, Cary....
"I've got to go in," she sighed at last. "And I don't want to at all. Tell me good-night."
His last kiss was very tender, very gentle, long and almost passionless. "That's good-bye, my darling," he said.
"I don't want it to be good-bye." She stretched out her arms to him. "Oh, I do wish it was us!"
He took her hands, pressed them to his hot eyes and released them. "Good-night, Pat. Go in. Please!"