“Why should we go on?” she asked, facing him. “Dick is joined to his idols, let him alone. Shall we walk back where we may be quiet? Or do you care for the crowd?”
He did not heed her last question, so rapturous was the music of her other. He led her through the slowly moving impact of people, impatient until he might get her beyond and to himself. Neither said very much until they were where the crowd ceased to make itself felt, and the night reclaimed its darkness from the glare of the many electric lights of the gala part of the town.
He was madly palpitant under the almost somber calm which he preserved outwardly. His passion, like a fever long incubating, leaped suddenly into full force by no conscious volition of his own. That evening, with Jacqueline in her home, the spell of the woman with the halo of domesticity around her had swept his love into an ardent desire—the desire of the man to have the woman he loves in a home of his own. And now he was with her alone under the throbbing stars, and something other than her former intolerance of him was keeping Jacqueline wordless. He knew that it was something very different, knew it by the instinct of the lover, and his heart bounded at her silence. When he spoke, Jacqueline shivered at the ground-roll of emotion which his words seemed to break into a momentary surge.
“I am very glad that Brinton came today.”
She nodded, acquiescent. She had meant to speak, but the words stuck.
“When the avalanche is ready,” he murmured, “or the sea is at the flood, a touch of nature’s breath—and the thing is done.”
“How prosaically you drop your figures,” she said, with a nervous laugh. “What are you trying to say?”
“Jacqueline!”
She started away from him, her face, very white, turned to his.
“Do I frighten you?”