Grit Lawless Part 51

"I don't deserve that you should come near me, Zoe... I behaved to you like a cad."

"You didn't behave well," she returned. "I wonder why you acted as you did. When Colonel Grey told me the story, I felt that you must hate me to let me think that... It made me bitter. Afterwards, when death came so very close, such matters appeared less important, trivial even... I ceased to think of them."

"It makes a difference," he said.

His hand twisted under hers until the palm came uppermost; his fingers closed upon her fingers, gripping them tightly. A little thrill of happiness ran through her. It was many a long year since his hand had gripped hers like that. He turned his face suddenly and looked at her.

"You are cold," he complained, but his eyes smiled with a look of complete satisfaction. "You punish me by staying out of my room altogether until I become violent, commit an a.s.sault on a very harmless person, and practically send for you. And now you are here--you permit me to hold your hand."

She laughed and flushed warmly.

"I'm leaving it all to you," she said softly. "I want to leave it to you... You ought to understand."

"When I was sick," he said whimsically, "I suffered from delusions. The most amazing as well as the pleasantest of these fancies was that one day you came and sat beside my bed where you are sitting now, only, inexplicably, your arms were about me, and your face was close to mine upon the pillow. I was out of my body then. I think I should have slipped away altogether but for those restraining arms. I've lain often and tried to will the vision back, but it never reappeared."

He turned in the bed and lifted himself slightly on his elbow.

"You are far more elusive than that fancy of mine," he grumbled.

He gripped the hand he held tighter, and pulled her towards him.

"I thought you weren't conscious," she said, stooping lower. "I didn't guess you knew..."

"Zoe! my dear! my dear!" he cried, his face close to hers. "All these years without you! ... How have I borne it? I have been a wanderer on the face of the earth,--a rudderless s.h.i.+p that has drifted with the current, that has had no helm to answer to, no one on the look-out. I wonder that I didn't go aground a dozen times. I should have got aground if there had not been the flame of my love for you alight in my heart to show me the danger places when I came to them. You have been my guiding star throughout the years. I never thought that we should meet, much less come together again; but I've always borne your goodness, your purity, in mind as things that counted, that kept a man from breaking himself on the reckless impulses of his own selfishness.

I've been a limited, carnal-minded cad. But whatever brief pa.s.sion has possessed me, I have never loved anyone but you. Zoe, I hate myself when I think of the past. I want to get away and hide myself--from you."

"Don't think of it," she said soothingly. "We've done with all that."

He looked at her wonderingly.

"What made you follow me out here?" he asked. "What brought you to this place, believing what you believed of me? ... It puzzles me to understand."

She put out her other hand and laid it upon his shoulder and pushed him gently but firmly back upon the pillow.

"Why trouble about understanding?" she asked. "I don't understand myself. It was just love drew me." She spoke lower. "Whatever you have done, whatever you have been, I have never ceased to love you."

He turned his face aside weakly. There were tears in his eyes. He endeavoured unsuccessfully to hide them from her. She put her arms about him, and gathered the shrunken, suffering figure to her bosom.

Then she laid her head beside his on the pillow and drew his face close to hers...