Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/182

 "Henry!" she cried, and sprang up to meet him. He might have taken her to his arms without a word. He knew it; she knew it; but he postponed the rapture. There was exquisite pain in self-restraint. They greeted each other with both hands extended.

"You have done it!" she exulted; a proud break in her voice.

With this single recognition of things material, a golden mist flooded in and shut out all mundane matter. By a subtle change in her expression, by a mere glance from limpid eyes Billie Boland, vital, practical, ambitious and imperious, who had commanded her lover when she could, cajoled him when she must, and in certain things found herself unable to do either, flew the signals of surrender, gave up freely the confession that she was conquered by a mighty passion, that her restless soul was trapped by love and eager to surrender to it.

Henry read the message like a headline. Read it and for a moment was humbled by the matchlessness of beauty that he had won; for a moment he was impelled to sink upon his knees before her. Instead, he continued to hold her hands, gazing at her fixedly, very tenderly and very fondly.

"Billie! I love yow and I love you," he breathed softly.

For an instant the silken fringes of her lids were lowered while a maidenly blush widened, mounting to the roots of her hair and creeping down over her neck, over the white of her sculptured bosom. She was his! And yet for a delicious instant still he tantalized his own passion with letting himself want her and want her but without taking her. He waited—watching, gloat-