Part 54 (2/2)
”I am not responsible to my friends. I don't care what they say. They are not choosing my wife for me. I _do_ know what you mean, and your protest increases my love for you. I am not concerned with your ghosts--only with your character.”
”But I am a _medium_!” she went on, desperately. ”I have this awful power. You're all wrong about mother and Mr. Clarke. They have nothing to do with what happens.” Her beautiful hands were clinched and her face set in the resolution to force her confession upon him. Her bosom rose and fell piteously as she struggled for words, ”You must not misunderstand me. I believe in the spirit-world. Sometimes I say I don't, but I do.”
He spoke soothingly: ”There is nothing wrong or disgraceful in your theory; it is your practice of trance, of mediums.h.i.+p, to which I object, and which I intend to prevent.”
”I want you to do that. I hate my trances and those public circles.
But will that put an end to the rappings and other things that go on around me when I am awake? That is the question.”
This was the question, but he rode st.u.r.dily over it, resolute to subordinate it if not to trample it under foot.
”Not at all. The real question is very simple: can you trust yourself to me, fully, because you love me? If you do I will answer for the rest. I do not know why you meant so much to me that day. I do not know why, out of all the women I know, you move me most profoundly; but so it is and I am glad to have it so.” He said this with a grave tenderness which moved her like a phrase from some great symphony, and as she raised her tear-stained, timid face to his she saw him as he seemed at that first meeting on the mountain-side, in the sunset glow, so manly, so frank, so full of power that he conquered her with a glance, and with that vision she knew her heart. Her eyes fell, her throat thickened, and her bosom throbbed with a strange yearning. She loved, but the way of confession was hard.
Understanding her emotion, and mindful of the place in which they sat, he softly said: ”You need not speak--just put your hand in mine and I will understand.”
Her hand, like some shy sentient thing, first drew away, fell hesitant, then leaped to his and nestled in his palm. He had planned to be very restrained and very circ.u.mspect, but the touch of her trembling fingers moved him out of his predetermined self-possession, and, careless of all the surroundings, he stooped and kissed her, then exultantly, warningly said: ”Remember, I am now your chief 'control,'
and there are to be no other 'guides' but me.”
With those words, all fear, all question, all care (save that vague distrust which the maiden feels when yielding herself to the first caress of the lover) dropped from her. The powers, the hallucinations, which had separated her from the world of womankind were forgotten, lost in the glow of her confidence and love.
THE END
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