“Here we are!” he said, his voice on a note of happiness. “At last!”
He stretched out his arms to the girl upon the threshold. She came into the light--tall almost as he, long fur coat half-open over her tailor-made costume, finely modelled head poised in a graceful, winsome upturn of the face, smiling at him in a radiance of eyes and mouth--and, on the movement of an irresistible impulse, cast herself into his embrace.
“At last!” she echoed. “Oh, Jim, dear!--at last--at long last!”
He held her, and she snuggled into his shoulder, face upturned to his, drawing his kisses down to her with the magnetism of her lips.
The quaint enamel clock on the mantelpiece ticked, just heard, the passing seconds of eternity, the only sound in the silence of their union.
Then, with the long breath of recovery from the timeless swoon of a kiss prolonged to its uttermost limit, she turned her head slowly to gaze about the room.
“Oh, Jim!” she said, in affectionate reproach, “and you told me you were a poor man!”
He shrugged his shoulders, his lips mobile in a little smile.
“Well, dear,” he replied in whimsical apology, “compared with the daughter of a man who owns half a city--compared with what you might have had!” He looked into her eyes. “Helen! You won’t regret? They’ll rub it in to you--the title you’ve thrown away--the position in society--what they’ll be pleased to term your hole and corner marriage----”
“Oh, Jim!--I’ve got you and you’ve got me--and nothing else matters--it seems to me that you and I are the only two people in the world!” She assured herself of a tightening of his embrace with a touch of her hand on his as she looked up into his eyes with a slow, smiling shake of the head that affirmed her love. “As if only you and I ever existed--and had always loved! As if all through eternity we had waited for this! As if I was born to be just Jim Dacres’s wife!”
“Darling!” His voice was low and earnest in a sincerity beyond doubt. “Jim Dacres’s wife you are--and, please God, I’ll never let you go!”
With one more kiss she disengaged herself, came into the centre of the room, threw her fur coat back from the shoulders with a smile that invited the assistance he was prompt to give.
“Are we all alone?” she asked, glancing round, struck by the quietude of the flat.