Page:Dangerous Business (1927).pdf/238

 He fingered the blanket, drawn over him by someone during the night. He recollected how he had seen Ellen under the Arletta's sail and he had called to Ken to catch her and, without regard for anyone else, he had leaped aboard her little boat. He recollected, and for the moment relived, his complete content as he had sat watching her, sailing with her to this place, her home.

He realized that, in his exhaustion, he had done exactly what he had wanted to do. If he had not been spent, he must have forbidden himself and controlled himself. Perhaps, if he had not been so wholly spent, he might not himself have known what he had wanted to do, but his exhaustion had stripped him of pretense and inhibition; it had made him, for that hour, utterly free; and so, seeing her, he had leaped to join her; and here he was, in her home.

He sat up; he arose and straightened his clothes and brushed his hair. Through the wide open windows, the morning breeze blew cool and the sunlight lay clear and clean; a waft of wood smoke reached him and he heard the pleasant crackling of a wood fire. He stepped from his room and soon came upon her.

Ellen was laying the breakfast table. She had a great blue bowl of strawberries in her hands—gray eyes lifted to his, smooth brown cheeks and her brown hands on a blue bowl of red berries. She was in a blue and white gingham dress.

She put down the bowl, slowly, not looking at it for looking at him. "Good morning," she said; and he damned within him the loss of his exhaustion; for, having destroyed his denials and pretenses, it had fled and left him