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Page 59
"Oh, my big American sweetheart," she whispered, and, approaching
him with a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm.
"Do you still think I am beautiful?"
"Beautiful!"
No man could have recognized the voice of Nicol Brinn. Suddenly
his arms were about her like bands of iron, and with a long,
wondering sigh she lay back looking up into his face, while he
gazed hungrily into her eyes. His lips had almost met hers when
softly, almost inaudibly, she sighed: "Nicol!"
She pronounced the name queerly, giving to i the value of ee, and
almost dropping the last letter entirely.
Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman
of the East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that
law which England's poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking
of a love so deep as to be sacred.
Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her
to the settee between the two high windows and placed her there
amid Oriental cushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen.
He knelt at her feet and, holding both her hands, looked into her
face with that wondering expression in which there was something
incredulous and something sorrowful; a look of great and selfless
tenderness. The face of Naida was lighted up, and her big eyes
filled with tears. Disengaging one of her jewelled hands, she
ruffled Nicol Brinn's hair.
"My Nicol," she said, tenderly. "Have I changed so much?"
Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very
musical. To the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest
music in the world.
"Naida," he whispered. "Naida. Even yet I dare not believe that
you are here."
"You knew I would come?"
"How was I to know that you would see my message?"
She opened her closed left hand and smoothed out a scrap of torn
paper which she held there. It was from the "Agony" column of
that day's Times.
N. November 23, 1913. N. B. See Telephone Directory.
"I told you long, long ago that I would come if ever you wanted
me."
"Long, long ago," echoed Nicol Brinn. "To me it has seemed a
century; to-night it seems a day."
He watched her with a deep and tireless content. Presently her
eyes fell. "Sit here beside me," she said. "I have not long to be
here. Put your arms round me. I have something to tell you."
He seated himself beside her on the settee, and held her close.
"My Naida!" he breathed softly.
"Ah, no, no!" she entreated. "Do you want to break my heart?"
He suddenly released her, clenched his big hands, and stared down
at the carpet. "You have broken mine."
Impulsively Naida threw her arms around his neck, coiling herself
up lithely and characteristically beside him.
"My big sweetheart," she whispered, crooningly. "Don't say
it--don't say it."
"I have said it. It is true."
Turning, fiercely he seized her. "I won't let you go!" he cried,
and there was a strange light in his eyes. "Before I was
helpless, now I am not. This time you have come to me, and you
shall stay."
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