Prev | Current Page 656 | Next

Webster, Henry Kitchell, 1875-1932

"The Real Adventure"


She left the gas turned low, took off her hat and ulster, pulled down
the blind over the window and shut the door, hung up a garment that had
been left flung over her trunk and dumped a bundle of laundry that had
not been put away, into a bureau drawer. All the time he'd been watching
her hungrily, without a word.
She turned and looked into his face, her eyes searching it as his were
searching hers, luminously and with a swiftly kindling fire. Her lips
parted a little, trembling. There was a sort of bloom on her skin that
became more visible as the blood, wave on wave, came flushing in behind
it. His vision of her swam suddenly away in a blur as his own eyes
filled up with tears.
And then, with that little sob in her throat, she came to him. "Oh,
Roddy ... Roddy!" was all she said. With her own lithe arms she strained
his embrace the tighter.
So far as the superstructures of their two lives were concerned,--the
part of them that floated above the level of consciousness, the whole
fabric of their thoughts and theories and ideals, that made them to
their friends and to each other, and very largely to themselves, Rose
and Rodney,--they were as far apart as on the day she had left his
house.


Pages:
644 645 646 647 648 649 650 651 652 653 654 655 656 657 658 659 660 661 662 663 664 665 666 667 668