Part 42 (1/2)
”Then take up the bet!”
”Why, that's an idea!” he said, with a chuckle.
He considered more profoundly, his arm still on her shoulder; but there was in it no acquiring touch, only a clinging--the clinging of a weak hand groping for companions.h.i.+p.
”I suppose I'm a lonely cuss at bottom,” he said slowly, nor did she follow his thought.
”Anything I can do I'll do,” she urged. ”It'll be my fight too! Come to me, call me night or day, when you need me--when things are getting too much for you! I'll come any time!”
”You can't!”
”I can!” she cried defiantly. ”What do I care what is said, if I know and you know that all is right! Thank G.o.d, I'm alone! I have no one to whom it matters what the world says. I'm only a waif, a drifter!”
”Drifters both!” he said solemnly.
She stopped a moment, struck by the idea, feeling their mutual clinging, and the incomprehensible, unseen winds of the night sweeping about them and carrying them--whither?
”Listen!” she added hurriedly. ”This is my promise. Fight it out, and I will help you by everything that's in me! No matter whom I'm with or where I'm going, I'll turn over everything, when you need me, and come!”
”Even nights like this?” he said. ”For that's when it'll be the hardest!”
”Especially nights like this!” she cried, opening her arms with a feeling of glorification.
”Tell me something,” he said slowly; ”and be honest with me!”
”I swear I always will,” she said impulsively from her heart, devoutly believing it.
”Are you in love now?”
”Yes!”
”Are you sure?”
His arm, as if suddenly aware of her body, removed itself. He bent toward her, striving to see her face.
An instant before, she had sworn to herself, swiftly, in the exultation of a new-born spiritual self, that to this man, at least, she would never lie; and all at once, by the divining charity of her woman's soul, bent on saving him, she began her first deception!
”No; I am not--sure!”
She had a quick fear that he would spoil everything by an overt movement, and shrank from him, conscious of the male and of her s.e.x. But at the end he rose quietly, saying:
”All right, Dodo. The fight's begun!”
If there were a double meaning in his words, he gave no sign of it. He went to the front and cranked the car, then drew the rug about her with solicitous deference, that had in it a new att.i.tude. He did not even offer his hand to seal the compact, and for that, too, she was profoundly thankful, watching him with slanted approving glances.
”Whatever he does he will do magnificently!” she thought.
”Comfy?” he asked in a matter-of-fact tone.
”Yes!”