“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that. Maybe I would.” She freed herself from her wrappings and stood up. “It’s not raining so hard now. Hadn’t we better start this minute? It will be night before we get to Biltmer’s.”
Fred struck another match. “It’s seven. I don’t know how much of the path may be washed away. I don’t even know whether I ought to let you try it without a lantern.”
Thea went to the doorway and looked out. “There’s nothing else to do. The sweater and the slicker will keep me dry, and this will be my chance to find out whether these shoes are really water-tight. They cost a week’s salary.” She retreated to the back of the cave. “It’s getting blacker every minute.”
Ottenburg took a brandy flask from his coat pocket. “Better have some of this before we start. Can you take it without water?”
Thea lifted it obediently to her lips. She put on the sweater and Fred helped her to get the clumsy slicker on over it. He buttoned it and fastened the high collar. She could feel that his hands were hurried and clumsy. The coat was too big, and he took off his necktie and belted it in at the waist. While she tucked her hair more securely under the rubber hat he stood in front of her, between her and the gray doorway, without moving.
“Are you ready to go?” she asked carelessly.
“If you are,” he spoke quietly, without moving, except to bend his head forward a little.
Thea laughed and put her hands on his shoulders. “You know how to handle me, don’t you?” she whispered. For the first time, she kissed him without constraint or embarrassment.
“Thea, Thea, Thea!” Fred whispered her name three times, shaking her a little as if to waken her. It was too dark to see, but he could feel that she was smiling.
When she kissed him she had not hidden her face on his shoulder,—she had risen a little on her toes, and stood straight and free. In that moment when he came close to her actual personality, he felt in her the same expansion that he had noticed at Mrs. Nathanmeyer’s. She became freer and stronger under impulses. When she rose to meet him like that, he felt her flash into everything that she had ever suggested to him, as if she filled out her own shadow.