Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/101

 hand involuntarily upon her arm, his expression one that mingled honest doubt with glorified joy. "Could it be that I am in love with you? . . . Could it?"

The look Billie gave him was complex. If she laughed, he was done for.

"You should know, Mr. Harrington," she suggested.

"But I don't," confessed the man helplessly.

Then she did laugh, but not derisively; her manner lightly mischievous. "Are you—are you more than usually susceptible where womankind is concerned?"

"By Jove, I thought I wasn't," declared Henry, then smiling weakly; "but I must have been mistaken. Strange things have been done to me. The world was gray yesterday morning; before evening it was all lit up. Life was—just—just wiggling along; but within an hour it had become exciting, a thing to be rushed at.

"That's why I did that fool thing about the rope. That's why I stepped into this movie stuff with the vault robbers. That's why I made all those exalted resolutions. Life seemed all at once so big and vital that I wanted to rush right at it, to tackle anywhere, high or low, and throw it and sit on top. It must—it must be you, don't you think?" He smiled, this time, with engaging frankness; then went on:

"Just now as I've been sitting here, you seemed to me all at once—no, not all at once! You've been growing on me—off and on—through all these twenty-six hours I've known you, until you seem just the biggest, grandest adventure that ever was. I want to fling myself right at you."

The man was so serious that Miss Boland had to be.

"Do you think it could be that—that I am in love with you?" he persisted, gray eyes big and honest.