Page:Stringer - Wine of Life.djvu/156

146 miracle of life repeating itself. A man had fallen in love with a woman, and wanted that woman as his own.

He crossed to the communicating door and seized the knob. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he inquiringly tapped on the panel.

"May I come in?" he asked.

"Of course," answered Torrie's voice, unnaturally quiet through the muffling panel of wood.

Storrow opened the door and stepped into her studio. She was partly undressed, but this did not deter him.

"What is it, Honey?" she asked, arrested by the look of solemnity on his face, staring at him over her bare shoulder.

He stood with his back to the wall, with a dueller's space between them.

"I want you to marry me," he said, more abruptly than he had intended to say it.

She stopped in the act of unhooking her corsets, her torso indrawn with that characteristic visceral writhe and contraction which always impressed him as reptilious. She looked up at him, wide-eyed with wonder. Then, still without speaking, she slowly continued to release the steel-banded cuirass of brocaded silk from her body, standing deep in thought as she dropped it on the chair beside her.

"What good would that do?" she finally asked.

"Every good in the world," he contended.

She reached, still thoughtful-eyed, for the tissue of silk and lace that lay within reach of her hand. He turned and walked to the end of the room, as though some new relationship had given rise to some new abashment in him. There he stood with his back to her as she abstractedly proceeded with her disrobing.

He resented, without quite deciphering the reason for doing so, that offhanded intimacy of action. Yet it was both too unconscious and too characteristic to be set