Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/271

 "I would rather walk a little, I think," she said. "Here where—where I can be within call. My absence last night seems to have made the Patriarch very uneasy, you know, and—and—let us just walk up and down here beneath the maples in front of the cottage."

How heavy upon the air lay the fragrance of the flowers; how still the night was, save for the constant muffled boom of the breaking surf!—for a moment an almost ungovernable impulse swept upon her to make some excuse, anything, no matter how wild, a sudden faintness, anything, and run from him back into the cottage. And then she tried to think, think in a desperate sort of way of some subject of conversation that she might introduce that would stave off, postpone, defer the words that she knew were even now on his lips—nothing—she could think of nothing—only that she might have let the Flopper have his way, have let him tell Thornton that she had gone to bed with—the pip. The pip! She could have screamed out hysterically as the word flashed all unbidden upon her—it stood for a very great deal that word—her world of the years of yesterday. Could she never get away from that world; was it too late—already! Could she, even with all the earnestness, all the yearning that filled her soul, ever live it down, ever be what Naida Thornton had called her that night—a good woman! Could she—

Thornton was speaking now—how strange that she would have done anything, given