“I think I’m—lonely,”
said Storran.
“Gillian,” he went on, his voice deepening.
“Gillian . . . dear. We’re two rather
lonely people. We shall be lonelier still when
Michael and Magda are married. Couldn’t
we be lonely—in company?”
Gillian’s hand moved a little beneath his, then
stayed still.
“Why, Dan—Dan——”
she stammered.
“Yes,” went on the strong, tender voice.
“I’m asking you to marry me, Gillian,
I’d never expect too much of you. We both
know all that’s in the past of each of us.
But we might help each other to be less lonely—good
comrades together, Gillian.”
And suddenly Gillian realised how good it would be
to rest once more in the shelter of a man’s
affection and good comradeship—to have someone
to laugh with or to be sorry with. There’s
a tender magic in the word “together.”
And she, too, had something to give in return—sympathy,
and understanding, and a warm friendship. . . .
She would not be going to him empty-handed.
“Is it yes, Gillian?”
She bent her head.
“Yes, Dan.”
THE EDGE OF THE DAWN
Magda paused outside the closed door of the room.
She knew whom she would see within. Lady Arabella
had told her he was there waiting for her.
Her first impulse had been to refuse to meet him.
Then the temptation to see him again—just
once more—before she passed out of his life
altogether, rushed over her like the surge of some
resistless sea, sweeping everything before it.
Very quietly she opened the door and went into the
room.
“Magda!”
She never knew whether he really uttered her name
or whether it was only the voiceless, clamorous cry
of his whole consciousness—of a man’s
passionate demand for the woman who is mate of his
soul and body.
But she answered its appeal, her innermost being responding
to the claim of it. All recollection of self,
of the dimming of her beauty, even of the great gulf
of months that lay between them, crowded with mistakes
and failure, was burned away in the white-hot flame
of love that blazed up within her.
She ran to him, and that white, searing flame found
its expression in the dear human tenderness of the
little cry that broke from her as he turned his gaunt
face towards her.
“Oh, Saint Michel! Saint Michel! How
dreadfully ill you look! Oh, my dear—sit
down! You’re not fit to stand!”
But when that first instinctive cry had left her lips,
memory came flooding over her once more. She
shrank back from him, covering her face with her hands,
agonisingly conscious of the change in herself—of
that shadowing of her beauty which the sensitiveness
of a woman in love had so piteously magnified.
Then, drawing her hands slowly down, she braced herself
to say what must be said.
