Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/324

 pale as that of the Ivory-browed woman before him. She did not move as she sat there; yet he could see the quickened rise and fall of her bosom.

"You should not say these things," she said, struggling to achieve a calm as complete as his own.

"But I've got to say them," he contended. "I've followed you half way round the world to say them."

She had clasped together the hands that lay in her lap and then unclasped them, with a small gesture of hopelessness. Yet somewhere deep in the shadowy eyes was a light which made them less rebellious, less combative.

"But what good can it do?" she cried out to him.

"I love you, and I want you," was his simple rejoinder.

"You can't! You can't!" she said with a little shudder of self-abasement. She was on her feet by this time, staring down at him with almost frightened eyes.

"Are you ashamed of me, of what I've been?" he asked as he stood confronting her.

"I am ashamed of myself, of all my life."

"But all your life's still before you," he contended. "We've both got to begin over again."

"If I only could!" she said with a half-mournful little gasp.

Hope surged through him at the sound of those words. He stepped quickly over to where she stood between the bowl of Parma violets and an Etruscan vase filled with anemones. She did not shrink away from him. But the look in her eyes was almost one of commiseration.