“I want you, girl.” His arm swept round her, and he held her while he looked down into her shining eyes. “So I haven’t told you that I love you. Did you need to be told?”
“We must go on,” she murmured weakly. “Frances and Lieutenant O’Connor—”
“—Have their own love-affairs to attend to.
“We’ll manage ours and not intrude.”
“They might think—”
He laughed in deep delight, “—that we love each other. They’re welcome to the thought. I haven’t told you that I love you, eh? I tell you now. It’s my last trump, and right here I table it. I’m no desert poet, but I love you from that dark crown of yours to those little feet that tap the floor so impatient sometimes. I love you all the time, no matter what mood you’re in—when you flash dark angry eyes at me and when you laugh in that slow, understanding way nobody else in God’s world has the trick of. Makes no difference to me whether you’re glad or mad, I want you just the same. That’s the reason why I’m going to make you love me.”
“You can’t do it.” Her voice was very low and not quite steady.
“Why not—I’ll show you.”
“But you can’t—for a good reason.”
“Put a name to it.”