"Perhaps a little bit." She put both arms about his neck. "My good friend, you are everything in the world to me. My silly life begins and ends in you. This great love of mine has quite eaten me up. Why, what would I do without you. You came as a brand to a cold hearth and set it aflame. Something in my heart sings now all day long."
Passion came over them as a surge of the sea, as a storm of wind. They bent close to each other, thinking no thought. Their breaths mingled. Their hearts marked one time.
At last she released her prisoner. Her eyes were shining in the dark. She began to speak in a low, eager voice. She might have been a messenger bringing glad tidings.
"You will never understand what this love has meant to me. You and I—we are different metals refining in the same furnace, and the fire does not treat us alike. My life at last has become easy to live. It is a simple and a grand thing. Think of Dingo Gap or Pelican Pool without sun or flies. Wouldn't they be wonderful places? Well, I find life changed as much as that. The little happenings no more have power to annoy. My eyes are strong to see straight ahead. In all matters I am undisturbed. This love of mine is a holy thing. It will brook no meanness. It will stoop to no crooked ways. Something cries out in my heart to grow and grow. I would bring you a wide-open mind. I would offer you a body as beautiful as that girl we talked of half-an-hour ago."
She began again. "And now, my good friend—yes, you who look at me so fondly—I am going to hurt you a little bit. I am going to tell you you have brought me my moments of sorrow. For a long time now I have known that your love and my love are of different kinds. Bad hours arrived for me once when an evil spirit whispered that you did not understand me, and therefore you could not truly love me. The whisperer said Nature demanded you should go hungering after a woman, and there was no choice but me. The whisperer said until you knew me, and demanded me because of your new knowledge, that my affections were anchored in the sands.
"But I have pushed aside the whisperer. I love you, and that is all that matters. For love knows nothing of hunger and unrest, of hope grown old and other miseries. Love is the clear light, and those the winds that wrestle for it, that are not of it and can never hurt it. But you will not test my strength? Answer me. You will not test it?"
"No, my girl. But your words could be kinder. I have no quick tongue like yours to tell my tale. I know this, that I am weary of waiting for you. Don't let us waste more of life. We have the whole world to see, and when we have grown tired, we shall come back here. The old home I am so sick of will grow beautiful under your care. I shall ride away in the morning, knowing evening will find you waiting for me——"
"Yes, yes, I shall be waiting for you, and you will arrive hot and tired, and you will say 'I won't eat anything.' But I shall coax you. And later on we shall sit together in the light of this same old moon, which will have travelled round a few times more, and will have become a little paler with watching. And we shall talk about olden days. And then we shall begin to grow old together, and I shall count your first grey hairs and—why, Jim, you are laughing at me!"
"Am I? Then give me my promise, for I must go home."
"What am I to say, Jim? You know I want the marriage as much as you do. But father is an old man, and there is nobody but me to look after him. He wouldn't think of giving up the mine to live with us. If you like, we can ask him again to-night. Then if he says no, I shall stay with him a little longer, and at last we must tell him it is our turn to choose. That's fair, Jim, isn't it? No, don't look sulky. I am quite right."