What
mother wouldn't accept an offering like that gravely!
This thing that Rodney had offered her, the valiant, heart breaking
pretense that she needn't give him anything--to her, whose aching need
was to give him everything she had!--was just as absurd as the child's
toy could have been. But it had cost him.... Oh, what must it not have
cost him in struggle and sacrifice, to construct that pitiful,
transparent pretense!--to maintain that manner! And the struggle and the
sacrifice must not be cheapened, made absurd by a sudden shattering
demonstration that they'd been unnecessary. His pretense must be melted,
not shattered. And until it could be melted, that aching need of hers
must wait.
And then she realized that the ache was gone--the tormenting restless
hunger for him that had been nagging at her ever since the first rush of
spring was somehow appeased. She'd have said, twenty-four hours ago,
that to be with him, have him near her, in any other relation than that
of her lover, would be unendurable.
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