Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/121

 "I had to tell you" he urged huskily.

She laid a quick hand on his sleeve, perhaps partly to reassure him, perhaps partly because she found herself swaying dizzily.

"I know, I know," she whispered, with white lips, "But—but—of course, Mr. Harrington, you couldn't expect me to love you in forty hours. Know whether I love you?"

"Yes," he demanded. "Yes. You're quick. You know now. If something in you hadn't been drawn to me I couldn't have been drawn so headlong to you. Yes, I expect you to put your hands in mine this minute and say, 'I love you, Henry! He offered his hands to her and waited.

He did not have to wait long. She swayed toward him, lifting her bright face to his; and she did put her hands in his—but not with yielding in their pressure.

"You are very clever, aren't you?" she conceded with a sober smile. "And I do admire you very much. I am drawn to you, but I do not know yet that I am drawn in the same way that you are."

"Oh, but it must be the same!" Harrington urged.

"Yours is a reckless nature," she warned, with a slow sidewise shake of her pretty head that to Henry was utterly destroying; "mine is not. You plunge; I reflect. You feel that you want me to make your life complete. I consider if I could make my life complete through you."

"Your—your life complete?" stammered Henry, his emphasis revealing just the old, benighted male notion; yet she was patient.

"But I have a life to live," she reminded him. "My position, my opportunities" And then all at once