THE AMATEUR LOVER
collar, not an extra hairpin, not anything. Aleck Reese either loved or hated everything I owned. I have n't left a single bridge on which one of my thoughts could even crawl back to him again
Half quizzically, half caressingly, Drew stooped down and brushed his lips across the lock of hair. Fragrant as violets, soft as the ghost of a kiss, the little curl wafted its dearness into his senses. But ranker than violets, harsher than kisses, lurked the blunt, unmistakable odor of ashes.
He laughed. And the laugh was bitter as gall. "Burning your bridges," he mused. "It's a good theory. But if I take your life into my bungling hands and sweat my heart out trying to make you love me, and come home every night to find you crying with fear and heartbreak, will you still pro test that the sting in your eyes is nothing in the world except the smudge from those burnt bridges? Will you promise?"
With desperate literalness she clutched at the phrase. Everything else in the room began to whirl round and round like prickly stars. "I promise, I promise," she gasped. Then sight not air, but just sight seemed to be smothered right out of her, and her brain reeled, and she wilted down un conscious on the floor.
Cursing himself for a brute, Drew snatched her
up in a little, white, crumpled heap and started for
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