Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/183

 ing, until she—until the long lashes quivered and the eyes lifted to him, wet and shiny with something that made their blue depths sparkle like jeweled springs.

"And I love you!" She almost sobbed the words, and let herself go to him.

"You—you darling!"

He had meant to give her that first kiss gently, oh, so gently, as one inhales the perfume of the most delicate flower; but there was a fragrance in the air that was not of roses. It was of her, and Billie Boland was not a flower. When cornered behind the last barriers of reserve, she was warm and vital as any woman. That drooping glance, that slow spreading blush, this palpitating warmth between his hands—each gave her lover assurance, each was fuel to his flame.

"Billie!" he cried, almost as if with pain. "I have you!" His wild young strength bound her to him. "Billie," he panted, "I love you and I love you!"

But she too was strong—she too was suddenly unbridled. Of love she gave him draught for draught, thrill for thrill, strength for strength, until he felt himself suddenly weak before the magnificence, the opulence of her response.

June—June! It was June in the garden and it was June in two lives. Blind—they were both blind. Harrington did not know that he had closed his eyes in the very sublimity of his ecstasy. He thought merely that he had been drenched in a torrent that fired him while it swept him away. Shoaled at length as upon the brink of some new Niagara of emotion, he opened his eyes. They were still standing, still embowered by the vine-festooned colonnade. She lay, like a crushed and crumpled beauty in the hollow of his arm, her hair in dis-