Page:Restless Earth.djvu/28

I know your tactics. This time the conquered is going to be hard to lose. You knew you’d catch me at last, didn’t you?”

“I haven’t caught you! I haven’t!” she cried passionately. “I don’t want you! I hate you! Go back home, you fool!”

He had stifled her cries by crushing her in his arms and smothering her lips with kisses—wild, animal caresses. He had lifted his head to laugh at the moonlit sky, and had felt her go limp in his arms and violent sobs shake her.

She had wept bitterly and he had abased himself to comfort her, becoming convinced in the process that he had been unjust; that, in justice to Grace, she had fought and almost conquered a genuine love for him, and had been betrayed by his presence and the moon.

“So that was why you were so distant with me?” he had asked after a long silence following their mutual confession of vain battle with instinctive attraction.

Midnight had passed, and they had sat together upon a sand-dune on the foreshore, close together, submerged in a sea of self-condemnation—yet strangely happy; reluctant to go their separate ways, gazing sentimentally at the moon-path upon the water crossed by moving black shadows where the surf broke with a chill thunder, wishing time might stand still for ever, dreading the morning, telling and re-telling their hopeless loves, pitying themselves and the woman who was the man’s lawful wedded wife.

“When first I saw you, Jimmy, I realised that you were the only man—the only man. If I had had the smallest grain of sense or honour I would have fled from your home on that first night. But I thought I was strong enoughto resist———”

Again he had silenced her with a kiss.

“Poor little Grace!” he had murmured. “What a mess! What are we going to do?”