The Guarded Heights Part 96

"Spring's at its best here. You'd better come to-morrow--Friday."

He hurried over to the marble temple.

"You didn't tell me Betty was in Princeton," he accused Lambert.

"Must I account to you for the movements of my wife?"

"Then Sylvia----" George began.

Lambert smiled.

"Maybe you'd better run down to Princeton with me this afternoon."

George glanced at his watch.

"First train's at four o'clock. Let Wall Street crash. I shan't wait another minute."

x.x.x

Betty had been right. Spring was fairly vibrant in Princeton, and for George, through its warm and languid power, it rolled back the years; choked him with a sensation of youth he had scarcely experienced since he had walked defiantly out of the gate of Sylvia's home to commence his journey.

Sylvia wasn't at the station. Neither was Betty. Abruptly uneasy, he drove with Lambert swiftly to the Alstons through riotous, youthful foliage out of which white towers rose with that rea.s.suring illusion of a serene and unchangeable gesture. Undergraduates, surrendered to the new economic eccentricity of overalls, loafed past them, calling to each other contented and lazy greetings; but George glanced at them indifferently; he only wanted to hurry to his journey's end.

At the Tudor house Betty ran out to meet them, and Lambert grinned at George and kissed her, but evidently it was George that Betty thought of now, for she pointed, as if she had heard the question that repeated itself in his mind, to the house; and he entered, and breathlessly crossed the hall to the library, and saw Sylvia--the old Sylvia, it occurred to him--colourful, imperious, and without patience.

She stood in the centre of the room in an eager, arrested att.i.tude, having, perhaps, restrained herself from impetuously following Betty.

George paused, staring at her, suddenly hesitant before the culmination of his great desire.

"It's been so long," she whispered. "George, I'm not afraid to have you touch me----You mean I must come to you----"

He shook off his la.s.situde, but the wonder grew.

As in a dream he went to her, and her curved lips moved beneath his, but he pressed them closer so that she couldn't speak; for he felt encircling them in a breathless embrace, as his arms held her, something thrilling and rudimentary that neither of them had experienced before; something quite beyond the comprehension of Sylvia Planter and George Morton, that belonged wholly to the perplexing and abundant future.

THE END

BOOKS BY WADSWORTH CAMP

THE ABANDONED ROOM THE GRAY MASK THE GUARDED HEIGHTS THE HOUSE OF FEAR SINISTER ISLAND WAR'S DARK FRAME