Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/276

 ness and dearness. Now don't be angry, please." He could not help it. He slipped his hand into her muff beside hers, and his fingers closed about her slender wrist.

"I'm not angry," she said, pretending not to notice his hand in the muff. "That is what makes you such a dangerous sort of man. A woman cannot be angry with you for more than a few moments. I think it's those boyish appealing eyes, and something about your mouth. But it's really terrible. One feels angry and then, in a flash the tables are turned and one is sorry, feels oneself cruel, and condones. Really, I think that is a dangerous sort of man, don't you?"

"Not a bit. Just a poor blundering idiot, floundering from one morass into another. Never meaning any real harm—upon my soul, Gay, no real harm, even at my worst. But I've actually no strength of character, I think—I've time to think these days—I know Edmund thinks so, too. He's as much as said so."

"Edmund!" Her tone said, How dare Edmund judge Derek! "What does Edmund know of trouble?"

"Nothing at all. He doesn't want to know anything, so he keeps out of it."

They had walked along a level plateau of ice and from it mounted a hummock that overhung the water. Down the glassy curve of it they watched the crashing of the malachite waves, now impotent to destroy what they had so recently created.

"You know," Derek went on, "the only decent thing about me is that I'm faithful. I mean—oh, Lord, I never can express myself—I mean that when any person—or thing—belongs to me once—once I possess it and care for it—it's always mine. Nothing can change that. For instance, there's a bit of you that's mine—that you gave me that morning in the stable—nothing can take that from me.