Page:Gibbs--The yellow dove.djvu/85

 She laid her hand gently on his arm.

“I am sorry,” she said.

He bent his head and kissed her fingers.

“It is not the Coningsby Venus who is essential to my happiness,” he whispered. “It’s the Doris Diana.”

She laughed.

“That’s the disillusionment of possession.”

“No. The only disillusionments of life are its failures—I got the Venus by infinite patience. The Diana” He paused and drew in his breath.

“You think that you may get the Diana by patience also?” she asked quietly.

He looked at her with a gaze that seemed to pierce all her subterfuges.

“I waited for the Coningsby Venus,” he said in measured tones, “until the man who possessed her—was dead.”

She started, and the color left her cheeks.

“You mean—Cyril?” she stammered.

“I mean,” he replied urbanely, “precisely nothing—except that I will never give you up.”

She recovered her poise with an effort, and when she replied she was smiling gayly.

“I’m not at all sure that I want to be given up,” she said, with a laugh that was meant to relax the tension. “You are, after all, one of the best friends I have.”

“I hope that nothing may ever happen to make you think otherwise.”

Was this a threat? She glanced at him keenly as she quoted:

“‘Friendship is constant in all other things save in the office and affairs of love.’ May I trust you?”

“Try me.”