And now she really wanted to run away! If she could have had a week, a
month, between the reading of this letter and the meeting of its writer,
it seemed to her that it would have been the happiest month of her life.
To take the letter with her into exile, to read it every day, but to
wait--wait--for the real crisis till she could quiet her racing
emotions. One sweet at a time--not an armful of them. But the man--true
to his nature--the man wanted the armful, and at once. And she had made
him wait all these months; she could not, knowing her own heart, put him
off longer now. The cool composure with which, last winter, she had
answered his first declaration that he loved her was all gone; the
months, of waiting had done more than show him whether his love was
real: they had shown her that she wanted it to be real.
The day was a hard one to get through. The hours lagged--yet they flew.
At eight o'clock she went down, feeling as if it were all in her face;
but apparently nobody saw anything beyond the undoubted fact that in her
white frock she looked as fresh and as vivid as a flower. At half after
ten Rosamond came to her to know if she had received an invitation from
Richard Kendrick to go for a horseback ride, adding that she herself was
delighted at the thought and had telephoned Stephen, to find that he
also was pleased and would be up in time.
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