He whirled upon her, sweeping her slight body to his breast with such fierceness and suddenness that her head swam.
"Sally! Sally!" Just that hoarse cry, muted, exultant.
Her hands crept slowly up his breast, so loving every inch of the dear body whose warmth came through the cloth of his shirt that they abandoned it reluctantly. When her hands were on his shoulders, clinging there, she threw her head back upon the curve of his right arm, and smiled up into his face. Her lips parting slowly to let out a little gasping sigh of joy.
In the silvery sheen with which the moon joyously and approvingly bathed them their eyes, wide, dark, luminous, clung for an aeon of time, reckoned in the history of love. Then David, knowing that his unasked question had been gloriously answered, bent his head until his lips touched hers.
He must have felt the slight stiffening of her body, the ardor in her small hands as they clung more fiercely to his shoulders. For he flung up his head, then turned it sharply away for a moment, as if ashamed for her to see the passion in his eyes. She took a drunken, uncertain step away from him, and his arms fell laxly from her body.
"What is it, David?" she asked in a small, quavering voice, scarcely more than a whisper.
"I shouldn't have done that!" David reproached himself with boyish bitterness.
"But David," Sally pleaded, in that small quaver, "don't you--don't you love me--at all? I thought--I--" Her hands fluttered toward him, then dropped hopelessly as he still stood sharply turned away from her.
"Yes, I love you. That's the devil of it," David groaned from the shelter of his arm. "I love you so much I can't think of anything else, not even of our danger."
She crept closer to him, stroked timidly the clenched fist which hung at his side. "Then--why, David? I--I love you, too. You--must--have known. I love you with all my heart." She stooped swiftly and laid her lips against his knuckles, which shone white as marble in the moonlight.
"Don't!" he cried sharply. He lowered the arm that had sheltered his shamed, passionate eyes and looked at her humbly, his whole body drooping. "Don't you see, darling--no, I mustn't call you that!--don't you see, Sally, that your--caring--only makes it worse? I wish I were the only one that has to suffer. But you're so young--oh, God!" he cried in sudden anguish. "You're so pitifully young! Sixteen! I ought to be horsewhipped!"