The Rose in the Ring Part 48

"You _do_ love me? I am not dreaming? It is really _you?_"

She suddenly lowered her eyes, the warm flush spreading to her throat, her neck, her ears. She caught her breath in a half-sob.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Her lips parted in amazement, tremulously struggling into a smile of wonder and unbelief]

Both had forgotten the tall woman who stood over there by the window, her hands clasped, her heart in the eyes that looked upon them. They did not see the beatific smile that came to her colorless lips. Nor were they aware of the fact that she turned away, to gently draw aside the curtain that she might look out, unseeing, upon the gloom of the night beyond.

He quickly lifted the girl's hands to his feverish lips. There he held them for many minutes while he steadied his rioting senses, regaining control of his nerves. He looked down upon the dark, soft hair and worshiped. A red rose rested there. He bent over and kissed her hair--and the rose.

Then she looked up.

"I do love you, David," she said softly, "are you--are you sure that you--Oh, David, are you sure?"

For answer, his eager arm stole over her shoulder and she was drawn close to his breast. She raised her lips to greet the kiss. Her little hand clutched his with a sudden convulsive ecstasy. He felt the warm, quick breathing--and then their lips met.

"I am very sure," he murmured, his voice husky with emotion. "There never has been a minute in which I was not sure, Christine, my darling."

"You have forgotten--you can overlook those old days when I was Little Starbright?" she whispered wonderingly. "They will make no difference--now?"

"I loved you then. You and I and my love have grown older and stronger and dearer with the years that have--"

She broke away from him, putting her hands to her cheeks in pretty confusion. Her eyes were shining brightly as she looked beyond him.

"Oh, mother! I--I forgot that you were there. I forgot everything." She ran to her mother and buried her face on her shoulder. "I told you it would come true, mother. I knew it would. Oh, I am so happy! Have I been ridiculous? Have I been silly, mother?"

It was the ecstatic David who rea.s.sured her on that point. In his unbounded joy he rushed over and enveloped the two of them in his long, eager arms.

Later on, after Mrs. Braddock had gone to her father's room, he sat with Christine on the low, deep sofa under the bookshelf gallery. Her hands were clasped in his. They had but little to say to each other in words. Their eyes spoke the thoughts that surged up from their reunited hearts. She had thrown aside the light, filmy wrap, and the sweet, velvety skin of her neck and shoulders gleamed in the soft light; her perfectly modeled, strong young arms were as clear and white as marble.

He was lost in admiration--in marveling admiration. For long stretches at a time he permitted himself to fall into silent, rapt contemplation of this perfected bit of womanhood. Every childish feature that he remembered so well had been subtly vignetted by the soft touch of nature; he was sensing for the first time the vast distinction between fifteen and twenty--the distinction without the difference; for she was the same Christine, after all. It was unbelievable. A delicate bit of magic was being performed before his very eyes; the slim, girlish sweetheart of other days was being effaced. The soft, insinuating loveliness of young womanhood, with all its grace, all its charms, was being revealed to him as if by some wonderful process in photography--new shades, new lights, new tints, all ineffably joyous in tone. He could not remember that her hair was so soft and wavy at the temples, nor had it ever seemed to caress her ears so adorably. Why was it that he had never noticed the delicate arch of her eyebrows? Why had he failed to see the limpid sweetness in her eyes? And her hair, too, seemed to cling differently above the slim, round neck. What magic sculptor had chiseled her lips into their present form? Her chin; her nose; her broad, white brow--why had he never observed them before? And what was this strange, new light in the dark eyes? This look that was no longer childish, no longer inquisitive, but steady with understanding!

The girl of fifteen was gone. This was the perfect, well-blown human flower, the woman. The woman! Slender, beautifully molded, sinuous, incomparably fine--the woman! He closed his eyes in sudden subjection to that thing called rapture. He held her close, strained to his own triumphant, vigorous body. She was his! The woman! Ah, it _was_ different!

"How beautiful--how wonderful you are, Christine," he whispered. "I can't believe that you are _my_ Christine."

She could only smile her confirmation. No words could have told so clearly the sensuous delight that stilled her tongue. There was joy in her soft breathing, in the gently spreading nostrils, in the half-closed eyes. She was experiencing the unspeakable thrill that comes but once in the dream of love.

When he spoke, at uneven intervals, his voice was husky with the pa.s.sion that consumed him.

Once he was saying: "It is too good to be true. I came unbidden, determined to learn how I stood with you. I could not wait. When I saw you to-day, I said to myself that you had grown away from me. I told myself I should have to win you all over again. You seemed unapproachable. You were so wonderful, Christine--so utterly beyond anything I had expected to find. I was alarmed, I was actually dismayed. But I told myself that I would win you; I would begin all over again and I--"

"You saw me to-day?" she interrupted in surprise. "Where?"

"I was waiting for you at the station--far back in the crowd. I wanted to see you in that way first. Your mother and I met there. She did not tell you. She asked me to come to-night, but she was careful to give me no hope. You will never know the doubts and fears that have beset me all this long evening. And then you came in. I was dazed. I was all a-tremble. And then to find that--that I had had all my fears for nothing! Why--why, I could have died for joy! You did not hesitate. You swept me off my feet. When you kissed me, Christine, I--I--it was as if night had turned to day in--"

"I have gone on loving you, David, from the beginning. There never has been a moment in which I have ceased to do so. Ah, you had nothing to fear. But I! Oh, my dear one, I was never free from doubt--never quite certain. You were so far above me that I--"

"Don't say that!"

"That I was sure you would not take our--our love dream seriously. When you came to be a man, with all that manhood meant to you, I felt somehow that you would forget the little circus girl who--"

He kissed her. Then she was silent for a long time.

"Your mother was telegraphing me to-day to come," he said after a time.

"Did you know that she intended to do so?"

"No. I only knew that she would do it--soon. She had promised--both of us, you know."

"Have you never asked her to send me the message?"

"Never! How could I? I would not have held you to the compact. Nor would she."

"And have you not told her that you cared for me all these years?

Didn't she know?"

"Listen, David," she said seriously. "My mother has never spoken of our compact. She did nothing to influence me. She was content to let time take its course--and nature, too. Ah, how wise she is! But all this time I have been conscious of a strange feeling that she was making me over anew with but one object in view. She wanted me to be all that you could expect, demand, exact, if you were to come some day to--to look me over, to see if I was--was worth the effort. Yes, David, she prepared me against this day. She worked with me, she planned, she denied herself everything to give me all that you might wish for in a--"

"My dear, you had everything to begin with," he began gallantly, but she checked him with a shake of her head.

"No, I did not. True, I had not been brought up as other circus children were. But I had a point of view that required years of training to destroy. We won't speak of my father. I don't like to think of him. David, as we used to know him, you and I. There was a time when he was different--and I loved him. But that was long before. I--I think he has gone out of my life altogether."

David realized then and there that she should not be kept in the dark regarding her father's whereabouts and designs. She was sensible, she was made of strong timber. She could face the conditions, no matter what they proved to be.

The thought was responsible for the irrelevant remark that followed. "I must have a word or two with Mrs. Braddock before I leave to-night."

She looked up quickly. "A word concerning--you and me?" she asked.

"Yes."

Her eyes were lowered again, this time with some of the life gone from them. A shadow crossed her face.

"David," she said, "I trust you, I know you are staunch and true. But, dear, are you considering well? Are you sure that you will never regret--this? No, don't speak yet, please. We must be frank with each other. I am not a silly, romantic girl, believe me. I have faced and can still face the real things of life. You are not driving yourself to forget or to overlook all the conditions that surround me, are you? I was a rider. My father was a rider. Oh, you are going to say that my mother was different. But what has that to do with it? What does it matter that she has brought me here, to this home of plenty and of respectability and--well, let us say it, of position. I am the granddaughter of Albert Portman. That may stand for something--yes, it _does_ stand for a great deal. But do not forget, David, dear, that I am the daughter of Tom Braddock. I am the granddaughter of old Stephen Braddock, who was a--a--"

"Don't say it, dearest! Why should you be saying all this to me? You, an angel among--"

"I must, David," she went on resolutely. "You have come here to ask me to be your wife--to hold me to a promise. You must think all this out in time, David. Please don't laugh in that scornful way. It hurts. I am very serious. Your friends, your people, will welcome me gladly as the granddaughter of Albert Portman, but will they take me, can they accept me, as the granddaughter of Stephen Braddock? As the product of a fashionable convent they may rejoice in me, but as the pupil of the sawdust ring,--as Little Starbright, a thing of spangles! Ah! How about that side of me? Who were my childhood friends and a.s.sociates? Don't misjudge me. I loved them all--I love them now. They were the best friends and the truest. But could they ever be the friends of your friends?"

"They are _my_ friends," he said simply, struck by her earnestness.

"Are you forgetting what they meant to me in the old days? And what was I? A fugitive with a price on my head. A--"

"Ah, but you were different--you always had been different. You were a Jenison. What are you going to say when some one--and there always will be the miserable some one--reminds you that he saw your wife when she was Little Starbright? What--"

"Don't look so miserable, Christine! If any one says that to me I shall congratulate him."

"Congrat--Oh, do be serious! It doesn't matter what I am to-day, David; it's what I was such a little while ago. I am not trying to belittle myself. _I_ am proud of what I am. Don't misunderstand me. I am a Portman! _Her_ blood is in me--her mind, her soul. But I am not all Portman. Suppose, David--suppose that my father were to come back some day. We know what he is--what he was. Perhaps the world may have forgotten, but suppose that he reminds the world of the fact that he is my father--"

"Christine! You are working yourself into a dreadful state over all this--"

"Am I not calm? Am I excited? No; you see I am not."