“I can’t help it. I don’t want to help it. Oh, if there was only anything I could do.”
He smiled faintly; and his words were so husky she could scarcely hear.
She still held him, but her arms relaxed a little. She looked up at John, and saw the young man standing there beside her. And a picture came back to her--the picture of John throwing himself against the red bull’s flank, blinding it, urging it away. His voice had been so gentle, and sure, and strong. She herself in that moment had burned with hate of the bull. Yet there had been no hate in John, nothing but gentleness and strength.
She had coupled him with Evered in her thoughts for so long that there was a strange illumination in her memories now; she saw John as though she had never seen him before; and almost without knowing it she rose and stood before him.
John made no move to take her; but she put her arms round his neck and drew his head down. Only then did his arms go about her and hold her close. There was infinite comfort in them. He bent and kissed her. And strangely she thought of Darrin. There had been something hard and cruel in his embrace, there had been loneliness in his arms. There was only gentleness in John’s; and she was not lonely here. She looked up, smiling through her tears.
As they kissed so closely, the warm light from the west came through the window and enfolded them. And Evered, upon the bed, wearily turned his head till he could see them, watch them. While he watched, his eyes lighted with a slow contentment. And after a little a smile crept across his face, such a smile as comes only with supreme happiness and peace. A kindly, loving smile.
He was still smiling when they turned toward him again; but they understood at once that Evered himself had gone away.