THE GIRL IN HIS HOUSE
kissed any woman before. It was less the kiss of a lover than that of a devotee at a shrine. It was something holy, something that breathed of abnegation. And what was that kiss to her? The first in all her recollection that any man had given her.
"I'm so happy, so crazily happy! If you hadn't loved me I'd have died. Always I've hungered for love, and always I've been denied. Your house and mine, forever and forever! God is good. I'm somebody now. I belong!"
Words! thought the man. What a futile thing words were sometimes! So he spoke with his lips and his arms. And all through this lover-hour, great as his love was, he sensed the shadow of the astounding tragedy.
"Oh!" she cried, suddenly breaking away from him.
"What is it?"
"Daddy!" She stooped for the letter and the photograph. Next she seized him by the arm and dragged him over to the lounge, pulling him down beside her. "Don't you see? He'll have to come home now. I'm going to be married!"
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