"Yes, friends if you like, but not just friends. We'd be enemies."
"O, but I don't want—"
The tide of her fears flowed to and fro, swung in, flung back again. The strength of the feeling made for fluctuation. Soul and body, which had kept such separate lives, each in its own fountain head, must toss together and struggle with each other before they could flow strongly out in the one channel. Not at once would the current sweep smooth. Even when, clasped and kissed, acknowledged lovers, though by no spoken word, they stood together, he looking down on her dark head.
Five days—and she was here in the middle of his life. She was in every direction in which he looked. The future he could not look into; the present was too large, filled all his horizon. The past was a dark alley. The harmless, natural life of the man who had lived there looked black. "What a brute I am!" he thought fearfully. "What does she, what can she see in me?"
She lifted her head at last, flung it back against his shoulder, and fixed her eyes on him a moment before she spoke. "Tell me something?" she questioned.
"Anything."
"What was it you wanted to ask me in the sewing-room, just as you came toward me?"
231
