He held me gently for half a second, and then, with a sob which I felt
rather than heard, he crushed me to him and stopped my breath with his
lips on mine. I understood things then that I never had before, and I
felt I was safe at last. I raised my hand and pressed it against John's
wet lashes until he could let me speak, and I was melted into his very
breast itself.
"Molly," he said, when enough tenderness had come back into his arms to
let me breathe, "you have almost killed me!"
"You!" I exclaimed, crowding still closer, or at least trying to. "It's
not _you_; it's I that am killed, and you did it! I know you don't
really want me, but I can't help that. I'd rather you do the suffering
with me than to do it myself away from you. I'm so hungry and thirsty
for you that--that I can't diet any longer!". I put the case the
strongest way I knew how.
"Want you, Molly?" he almost sobbed, and I felt his heart pounding hard
next to my shoulder.
"Yes, want me!" I answered with more spirit than breath left in me. "I
refuse to believe you are as stupid as I am, and anybody with even an
ordinary amount of brains must have seen how hard I was fighting for
you. I feel sure I left no stone unturned. Some of them I can already
think back and see myself tugging at, and it makes me hot all over. I'm
foolish and always was, so I'm to be excused for acting that awful way,
but you are to blame for _letting_ me do it. I'm going to be your
punishment for life for not having been stern and stopped me. You had
better stop me, for if I go on loving you as I have been for the last
few minutes it will make you uncomfortable."
"Blossom," he said, after he had hushed me with another broken dose
of love, as large as he thought I could stand--I could have stood
more!--"I am never going to tell you how long I have loved you, but that
day you came to me all in a flutter with Bennett's letter in your hand
it is going to take you a lifetime to settle for. You were mine--and
Bill's! How _could_ you--but women don't understand!" I felt him
shudder in my arms as I held him close.
"Don't women know, John?" I managed to ask softly in memory of a like
question he had put to me across that bread and jam with the rose
a-listening from the dark.
What brought me to consciousness was his fumbling with the lace on that
blue muslin relict of a sentiment. The lace had got caught on his sleeve
buttons.
"Please don't forget that that is his possession," I laughed under his
chin. "I'm still scared to death of him, and you haven't hid me yet!"
"Molly," he asked, this time with a heaven-laugh, "where could you be
more effectually hid from Alfred Bennett than in my arms?"
I spent ten minutes telling Billy what a hippopotamus really looks like
as I put him to bed, but later, much as I should have liked to, I
couldn't consume that horrible dinner, that I had helped prepare at the
Johnsons', in the shelter of John's arms, and I had to face Alfred. Ruth
Clinton was there, and she faced him too.
A man that can't be happy with a woman who is willing to "fulfil his
destiny" doesn't deserve to be.
Then we came over here, and John had the most beautiful time persuading
Aunt Adeline how a good man like Mr. Carter would want his young widow
to be taken care of by being married to a safe friend of his instead of
being flighty and having folks wondering whom she would marry.
"You know yourself how hard a time a beautiful young widow has, Mrs.
Henderson," he said in the tone of voice that always makes his patients
glad to take his worst doses. He got his blessing and me--with a
warning.
A lovely night wind is blowing across my garden and bringing me
congratulations from all my flower family. Flowers are a part of love
and the wooing of it, and they understand. I am waiting for the light to
go out behind the tall trees over which the moon is stealthily sinking.
He promised me to put it out at once, and I'm watching the glow that
marks the place where my own two men creatures are going to rest, with
my heart in full song.
He needs rest, he is so very tired and worn. He confessed it as I stood
on the step above him to-night, after he had taken his own good night
from me out under the oak-tree. When he explained to me how his agony
over me for all these months had kept him walking the floor night after
night, not knowing that I was waiting for the light to go out, I gave
myself a sweetness that I am going to say a prayer for the last thing
before I sleep. I took his head in my arms and put my lips to that
drake-tail kiss-spot that has tempted me for I won't say how long. Then
I fled--and so did he!
I had about decided to burn this book, because I shan't need it any
longer, for he says he and Billy and I are going to play so much golf
and tennis that I shall keep as thin as he wants me to without any more
melting, or freezing, or starving, but perhaps he would like to read the
little red book.