The Melting of Molly Part 9

He must have been as pale as I was, and for an eternity of a second he looked at me, then suddenly heaven shone from his eyes and he opened his arms to me with just one word.

"Here?"

I went.

He held me gently for a half-second, and then with a sob which I felt rather than heard, he crushed me to him and stopped my breath with his lips on mine. I understood things then that I never had before, and I felt that wise guardian man-angel take his fingers from mine and leave me safe at last. I raised my hand and pressed it against John's wet lashes until he could let me speak and I was melted into his very breast itself.

"Molly," he said when enough tenderness had come back into his arms to let me breathe, "you have almost killed me!"

"You!" I exclaimed, crowding still closer, or at least trying to. "It's not _you_; it's I that am killed, and you did it! I know you don't really want me, but I can't help that I'd rather you'd do the suffering with me than to do it myself away from you. I'm so hungry and thirsty for you that--that I can't diet any longer!" I put the case the strongest way I knew how and got a swooning, maddening, luscious result.

"Want you, Molly?" he almost sobbed, and I felt his heart pounding hard next to my shoulder.

"Yes, want me!" I answered with more spirit than breath left in me. "I refuse to believe you are as stupid as I am, and anybody with even an ordinary amount of brains must have seen how hard I was fighting for you. I feel sure I left no stone unturned. Some of them I can already think back and see myself tugging at, and it makes me hot all over. I'm foolish, and always was, so I'm to be excused for acting that awful way, but you are to blame for _letting_ me do it. I'm going to be your punishment for life for not having been stern and stopped me. You had better stop me some now anyway, for if I go on loving you as I have been for the last few minutes it will make you uncomfortable."

"Peaches," he said, after he had hushed me with another broken dose of love, as large as he thought I could stand--I could have stood more!--"I am never going to tell you how long I have loved you, but that day you came to me all in a flutter with Al Bennett's letter in your hand it is going to take you a lifetime to settle for. You were mine--and Bill's!

How _could_ you--but women don't understand!" I felt him shudder in my arms as I held him close. I was repaid for all those tiresome exercises I had taken by the strength to crush him against my breast almost as hard as he crushed me. Our combined strength was terrific, dangerous to life and ribs, but--heavenly!

"Don't women know, John?" I managed to ask softly in memory of a like question he had put to me across that bread and jam with the rose a-listening from the dark.

What brought me to consciousness was his fumbling with the b.u.t.tons at the waist of that blue muslin relict of a sentiment. I had fastened but one, and the lace had got caught on his sleeve b.u.t.tons.

"Please don't b.u.t.ton me into his possession," I laughed under his chin.

"I'm still scared to death of him, and you haven't hid me yet!"

"Molly," he asked, this time with a heaven-laugh, "where could you be more effectually hid from Al Bennett than in my arms?"

I spent ten minutes telling Billy what a hippopotamus really looks like as I put him to bed, but later, much as I should have liked to, I couldn't consume that horrible dinner, that I had helped prepare at the Johnsons, in the shelter of John's arms, and I had to face Alfred. Ruth Chester was there, and she faced him too.

A man that can't be happy with a woman who is willing to "fulfil his destiny" doesn't deserve to be.

Then we came over here, and John had the most beautiful time persuading Aunt Adeline how a good man like Mr. Carter would want his young widow to be taken care of by being married to a safe friend of his instead of being flighty and having folks wondering whom she would marry.

"You know yourself how hard a time a beautiful young widow has, Mrs.

Henderson," he said in the tone of voice that always makes his patients glad to take his worst doses. He got his blessing and me--with a warning.

A lovely night wind is blowing across my garden and bringing me congratulations from all my flower family. Flowers are a part of love and the wooing of it, and they understand. I am waiting for the light to go out behind the tall trees over which the moon is stealthily sinking.

He promised me to put it out right away, and I'm watching the glow that marks the place where my own two men creatures are going to rest, with my heart in full song.

He needs rest, he is so very tired and worn. He confessed it as I stood on the step above him to-night, after he had taken his own good night from me out on the porch. When he explained to me how his agony over me for all these months had kept him walking the floor night after night, not knowing that I was waiting for the light to go out, I gave myself a sweetness that I am going to say a prayer for the last thing before I sleep. I took his head in my arms and pressed his cheek down against Billy's sleep-place on my breast over my heart and put my lips to that drake-tail kiss-spot that has tempted me for I won't say how long. Then I fled--and so did he!

I had about decided to burn this book, because I shan't need it any longer, for he says he and Billy and I are going to play so much golf and tennis that I shall keep as thin as he wants me to be without any more melting or freezing, or starving, but perhaps he would like to read the little red devil. Do you suppose he would?