"No, Larry, no!" she gasped, her breath coming short. "Dearest, don't be cruel to me! How can I keep that promise! If you had seen Papa just now and Mother--her terror and her helplessness! How could I leave them? Supposing that I defied him, and married you, and that he died in one of these furies! Just think what that would be for us!"
"He wouldn't die!" said Larry, obstinately. "People don't die as easy as all that!" he added, with a fierce thought of regret that Dick had not gone out in this latest storm.
"Listen," said Christian, beseechingly. "Don't let us be in such a hurry. Everything needn't be settled at once. We'll ask Dr. Mangan how Papa is, and if there is real danger for him in these rages. He was nearly as bad on Saturday after the Priest and the tenants had been here."
Larry's face was dark; he was not used to opposition. His guardians and his spiritual directors had alike found that while he was easy to lead, he was a difficulty and a danger to drive. He was stirred to the depths now. The strain of receiving Dick's onslaught in silence, the shock of his collapse, and now the fire that Christian's nearness and dearness had lit in him, all broke his self-control. He held her to him.
"I will never let you go! Never--!" His lips were on hers again, life, with all its difficulties, was again forgotten, the rhyme of the Fairies' Well galloped in his hot brain:
"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."
The sound of the hall door opening, and the grinding roar of a motor engine running down, recalled them both to this troublesome world.
But in Christian's heart, whether from within or from without, a voice had spoken, telling the kisses, one by one, as though they were the petals of a flower. "This year, next year, sometime, never!" If the last word had been "sometime," or "never," she knew not; she knew only that if what before her was the way of renunciation, she would find it a hard way to walk in.
Dr. Mangan stood, a massive presence, at the top of the stairs, and talked massively to Lady Isabel of Dick's condition.
"Very critical--no worries--nourishment--would he have a nurse?"
To which Lady Isabel, a poor, shaken, pallid Lady Isabel, with no more backbone than the shape of blancmange, which, it must be said, she somewhat resembled, replied: "_Nothing_ would induce him!"