His eyes, dark with pain, searched her face.
“I cannot bear to remember all that has passed between us. I know now that I was less than a man to threaten you—browbeat you, as I did. I hope you will believe me when I tell you I am hoping for your best—your truest, and most lasting happiness.”
His voice, shaken with the solemn passion of renunciation, died into silence.
She drew a deep sigh that was half a sob.
Her mouth quivered like a grieving child’s.
She heard his rapid step on the gravel without, and later the whir of wheels, faint and fainter in the distance.
Barbara did not tell David all that had passed between Jarvis and herself, when on the following day he unburdened himself of the multiplied conjecture and complaints which had occurred to him since his briefly renewed acquaintance with the lawyer. In some uncomprehended way their past had acquired a new significance in Barbara’s eyes, almost sacred in the light of Jarvis’s difficult confession. As she had, through some deep, delicate instinct, hidden her early romance from Jarvis, she now shielded from David’s scrutiny his rival’s unavailing passion and pain. David would not understand, she knew; he would laugh and toss his handsome head, secure in his own easily won triumph.
“I suspected the old fox knew more than he owned up to me, though when I taxed him with it he was ready to lie out of it,” David said.
He drew Barbara to him and kissed her carelessly full on the mouth. Then when she would have withdrawn herself from his arms, he laughed, and held her strongly to him, looking deep into her eyes.
“You don’t want to get away from me,” he said. “You are mine; didn’t you know that?”
He kissed her a dozen times, hotly, eagerly, holding her breathless, crushed against his breast, releasing her at last, flushed and tremulous, her heavy hair loosened on her neck.
David watched her with amused eyes, as she restored the hairpins to place, following the curving lines of her young figure appreciatively.
“You need some handsome gowns, Barbara, to set off your good looks,” he said. “You’ll have them, too, when you’re my wife.”
“I’ll wager you’ve been wondering why I didn’t bring you a ring,” he went on exuberantly. “Girls always like rings, and I see you don’t wear anything but that plain one. Here, I’ll——”