Anna Lombard, page 69 by Victoria Cross
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ou wished it. I felt, after our first meeting that first night, that you were the being in the whole world I was to love with all my soul. My whole nature went out to you and accepted you. I felt my heart opening to your smiles as a flower uncloses itself to the touch of the sun. Your arms held me in the dance, and to those arms I would have trusted myself forever. I can not explain to you why, except that love and trust and confidence in you were borne in upon my mind."
"And when I went away without speaking you were disappointed?"
My voice was uncertain; a hot mist was forcing itself over my eyes.
"Yes."
Her answer was so frank, so certain, so unwavering.
Then I broke out into wild protestations, my reasons for my action, my love for her, my unselfish motives, all my thought had been for her. To which she listened quietly and as quietly replied;
"I know. You have told me. I understand. But in acting as you did, you ran the risk."
"But you say you still love me?"
"I do! I do!"
And her lips were pressed to mine with a passion that went through and through me in waves of fire.
"And no one has come between us in the interval?"'
"Could I love two men at the same time?"
I laughed.
"Well, what is it? What is it? You are the soul of truth. Tell me why, just your reasons, and I swear I will be patient."
"I have told you. It is just a wish of mine to delay a little as you did."
"But I had my reasons."
"You did not tell them to me."
And so at last I had come away from her, confused, perplexed, puzzled, distressed beyond words and frightened. Yes, for as a slight symptom will tell to a physician, surely and without hope, the approach of a loathsome and relentless disease, so to my brain this strange phase of her feeling foretold something, though I could not discern what, of menace to the future.
And as I walked onward, reviewing all that had been said by us both, I grew cold and chill in the sultry