Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/126

 Elmer lunged gallantly:

"Well, you can go to bed, but we young folks are going to sit up and tell each other our middle names! I'm no preacher on week days—I'm just a student, by Jiminy!"

"Well— If you call this a week day. Looks like a week night to me, Brother!"

Everybody laughed.

She was in his arms, on the couch, before her father had yawned and coughed up the stairs; she was in his arms, limp, unreasoning, at midnight; after a long stillness in the chilling room, she sat up hastily at two, and fingered her rumpled hair.

"Oh, I'm frightened!" she whimpered.

He tried to pat her comfortingly, but there was not much heart in him now.

"But it doesn't matter. When shall we be married?" she fluttered.

And then there was no heart in him at all, but only a lump of terror.

Once or twice in his visions he had considered that there might be danger of having to marry her. He had determined that marriage now would cramp his advancement in the church and that, anyway, he didn't want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick, who would be of no help in impressing rich parishioners. But that caution he had utterly forgotten in emotion, and her question was authentically a surprise, abominably a shock. Thus in whirling thought, even while he mumbled:

"Well—well— Don't think we can decide yet. Ought to wait till I have time to look around after I graduate, and get settled in some good pastorate."

"Yes, perhaps we ought," she said meekly to her man, the best and most learned and strongest and much the most interesting person she had ever known.

"So you mustn't mention it to anybody, Lu. Not ever to your folks. They might not understand, like you do, how hard it is for a preacher to get his first real church."

"Yes, dear. Oh, kiss me!"

And he had to kiss her any number of times, in that ghastly cold room, before he could escape to his chamber.

He sat on his bed with an expression of sickness, complaining, "Hell, I oughtn't to have gone so far! I thought she'd resist more. Aaah! It wasn't worth all this risk. Aaaaah!