Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/325

 "Oh, you should never have come here!" she mourned.

"Can't you give me a shred of hope?" he pleaded as he caught her passive hand in his. Yet its possession brought him no sense of triumph. She stared down at it as it lay limp and listless between his fingers, as though in it lay epitomised all that was abhorrent in her past life. She was moving her head slowly from side to side.

"There's nothing to give now, not even hope!"

Her mournful eyes were studying his face. It was not their beauty that barbed his body with sudden arrows of fire. It was the look of wordless pleading in them, of pleading touched with vague pity and regret for something which he could not comprehend. It awoke in him the dormant energy which had made his life what it was, the quick and instinctive revolt against surrender, against quiescence and hesitation in moments of crisis.

"Then I don't ask for hope," was his sudden cry. "Can't you see that all I want is you—you!"

She wavered mistily for a moment before his eyes. Then his hungering arms went out and she seemed to melt into them and he stood holding her sobbing body against his own. He could feel each quick and capitulating catch of the breath as he held her there without resistance. And she seemed something flower-like and precious, something to be always cherished and sheltered, as she lifted her face and looked into his eyes. "Oh, it's no use," she said with a little child-like wail. "I can't help it! I love you! I do! I do!"

He could feel the arms that had seemed so