With a low exclamation that was wordless and a face tense and white, he was at the girl's side and his arms were again about her. She shook her head and tried to draw away, but he only held her the more closely until she raised her face and said patiently, "I'm very tired, don't make me fight both myself and you."
The musician shook his head and talked fast. "You said when I kissed you that you thought it meant something very different. You could have meant only that you thought I loved you. But that was not all. Thinking that I loved you would have meant nothing to you if you hadn't loved me--if you didn't love me now. You do. You have just said, 'Don't make me fight myself.' There would be no fight with yourself--if you didn't love me."
He paused and his arms held her very close, as he saw her turn away her face and make an effort to release herself, but in the eyes that she averted he read the cost of the effort.
"Please let me go." The words came faintly.
"Not until you answer me. I love you, Marcia. This time it means all that you thought it meant before. I love you."
Her eyes came around again and intently studied his own, then the voice spoke in low tone:
"No. You think you do--but it's only impulse."
"I love you," he insisted, "and you love me. Your pupils confess it. Why deny it with your lips? You love me."
She gently disengaged herself and sat again on the lounge.
"Very well," she told him as she looked at him with an honesty of expression under which his own gaze fell discomforted, "suppose I do confess it, what then? I hadn't ever meant to confess it, but perhaps it's better that we understand things. We mustn't drift blindly. Just now, Paul, when you declared your love you thought you meant it. For the fleeting time it took to say it you did mean it. If you saw her tomorrow you would tell her the same things, and you'd believe yourself honest. If I loved you beyond all hope of forgetting you, it would only prove that we had both made a mistake. We mustn't go on with it."
As a wind may veer without warning, the current of Paul Burton's emotions shifted. While wishing to deny and argue, he knew that what she told him was true. He had entered the house with no thought of love-making. Had she accepted his protestations at their face value, he would have left it shaken with an agony of doubt and misgiving. After all he had sworn his love first to Loraine. He had permitted her to separate from her husband on the assumption that his own allegiance would hold. Could a man truly love two women at the same time, he wondered. Whatever he did he must appear a weak fool. The fact that this phase of the matter presented itself for consideration at this time proved only that it was Paul Burton who found himself in the situation.