saw it in your eyes long ago. A woman always knows. I wanted you to do what you did to-night. I knew I would be obliged to tempt you. I came up here while the moon and the music would help me. I did it all on purpose—I stood close to you—for I knew you were just my slow old Yankee who would never come out of his shell till I poked. There! I have confessed!”
His mad joy did not allow him to see anything of the coquette in that confession. It all seemed to be consecrated by the love he felt for her—a love which was so honest that he perceived no boldness in the attitude of this girl who had come so far to meet him. He took her into his arms again, and she returned his kisses.
“Tell me again, Boyd, that you love me,” she coaxed.
“And yet I have no right to love you. You are—”
“Hush! Hush! There goes your Yankee caution talking! I want love, for I am a girl. Love hasn't anything to do with what you are or what I am. Not now! We will love each other—and wait! You are my big boy! Aren't you?”
He was glad to comply with her plea to put sensible talk from them just then. There was nothing sensible he could say. He was holding Julius Marston's daughter in his arms, and she was telling him that she loved him. The world was suddenly upside down and he was surrendering himself to the mad present.
In the yacht's saloon below a woman began to sing: “Love comes like a summer sigh, Softly o'er us stealing. Love comes and we wonder why To its shrine we're kneeling. Love comes as the days go by—”
“That's it,” the girl murmured, eagerly. “We don't know anything at all about why we love. Folks who marry for money make believe love—I have watched them—I know. I love you. You're my big boy. That's all. That's enough.”
He accepted this comforting doctrine unquestioningly. Her serene acceptance of the situation, without one wrinkle in her placid brow to indicate that any future problems annoyed her, did not arouse his wonderment or cause him to question the depths of her emotions; it only added one more element to the unreality of the entire affair.
Moon and music, silver sea and
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