Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/118

 The blue eyes regarded him siftingly. "You may have fallen but you are not plunging!" she dared him slyly.

He took the dare—fiercely—with one of his fighting smiles. "Miss Boland—Billie, I want you!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand.

"Oh, now you are 'Hellfire'!" she laughed mischievously.

"As the steel wants the magnet so everything in me cries out for you," he clamored so fiercely that she became suddenly serious. "I'm not a mollycoddle. I don't pretend I haven't wanted other women. I wanted a woman once with all my soul; but that was in France."

Into Miss Billie's blue eyes there came a startled look.

"My want was very intense, because life itself was to be short and I had to be intense or get cheated," Harrington was assuring her. "But the want that makes me do this abrupt thing, speak these abrupt words to you this morning is far bigger. I wanted Jeanne so that I could have her and die. I want you so that I can have you and live. There is more in me than there was five years ago; more in me than there was twenty-four hours ago. You have made me something that I was not and that something, all of it, turns back to you, its creator. . . . I—I love you, Billie!" His impetuous utterance softened infinitely.

He sought to draw her toward him; but her hand struggled for its release and was permitted to obtain it. Her face had whitened, as did his. Her figure had straightened and she pushed him from her with a look of resentment, the reason for which he understood.