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Page 112
The terrible hour had come!
She would have, out of very decency, to tell him everything: why she
lay where he had so miraculously found her; how she had promised
herself to his friend; how she had . . .
She clutched her bonny curls in both hands and pressed herself hard to
the ground, longing that it should open and swallow her up. She could
not get up, she could not turn round to meet the eyes of the man she
loved with all the strength of the love of which she was capable; she
could not watch the love in his eyes change to a look of disgust; she
simply could not do it.
And then she felt his hands on hers, and his fingers unfastening hers
one by one from her grasp upon her curls; and she lay quite still; with
a lovely warm feeling creeping over and through her, because she knew
by the gentleness of the touch and the firmness of it that she would be
gathered up safely into his arms, and carried away to happiness.
And, just as she had thought he would, he put his arms around her and
lifted her like a feather and crushed her up against his heart and got
to his feet and lifted his head to the glory of the sky.
But she would not look up; she could not, because she had taken the
jewel of her youth and flung it carelessly far from her, so that she
lay as a woman in his arms, and a woman who had looked deep in the
passing of a few hours into the heart of those things which have to do
with love.
The wind whispered in her ear as it carelessly touched her face, and it
whispered in a voice out of the past.
And this is what it whispered:
". . . for love will have come to her, maybe for a day, maybe for a
second of time, but a love which will mingle her soul with the soul of
her desert lover . . . yet it is the love of the soul that endureth for
ever, yea, even if the body of the woman passeth into another's
keeping."
And Ben Kelham, feeling her shiver and thinking, in the simplicity of
his heart, that she was cold and hungry, tucked the satin cloak with
sable collar still closer round her, then looked across to the east,
where lay a pall of smoke upon the air.
"I am taking you back, Damaris my little love." He spoke slowly, with
his eyes on the burning tents, the significance of which had sunk deep
into his heart. "Won't you look up? Won't you just say that you will
marry me, so that I can tell everyone directly we get back?"
He put her on her feet when she suddenly struggled and pushed against
him, and stared aghast when she bowed her face in her hands and sobbed.
"Damaris--dear--what is it? Don't you want to marry me?"
Damaris nodded, her lovely head which glistened like a hall of silk in
the blaze of the sun.
"You do? You will?--Then what are you crying for? Oh! Damaris------"
The words came muffled as she shook with sobs.
"Because of the scandal, Ben. Because of what people will say about
me--I mean about me when they know I am engaged to--to you--they
will--laugh at you behind your back--they will--they will know
about--about----"
He pulled her to him quite roughly and pressed her head against his
shoulder, which it barely reached.
"Laugh!" he said. "Laugh--at me--or you! I should just like to hear
them, darling. There is a way out of all this, sweetheart, somewhere,
and I am going to find it, and all that has happened, beloved, rests on
my shoulders, and heaven knows they are broad enough to bear it. And
if we have hurt others, darling,"--and he looked over his shoulder to
the tents,--"it has been through my carelessness, and we shall be shown
a way in which to try and make amends. Laugh, dear? Let them laugh,
dear heart, when they see how we love each other."
But, for all that, he frowned above her curly head, because he had all
the Englishman's horror of scandal in connection with any of his
women-folk; but he set his teeth and crushed her up closer, then let
her go suddenly and swung her round, pointing across to the west.
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