storage warehouse," he interrupted, trying to
steel himself against her rather plaintive friendliness.

"Don't you intend to shake hands with me?" she asked suddenly. "I am so
glad that you have come home,--come back, I mean,--and--" She advanced with
her hand extended.

It was a perilous moment for both of them when she laid her hand in his.
The blood in both of them leaped to the thrill of contact. The impulse to
clasp her in his arms, to smother her with kisses, to hold her so close
that nothing could ever unlock his arms, was so overpowering that his head
swam dizzily and for an instant he was deprived of vision. How he ever
passed through that crisis in safety was one of the great mysteries of his
life. She was his for the taking! She was ready.

Their hands fell apart. A chill swept through the veins of both,--the ice-
cold chill of a great reaction. They would go on loving each other,
wanting each other, perhaps forever, but a moment like the one just past
would never come again. Bliss, joy, complete satisfaction might come, but
that instant of longing could never be surpassed.

He was very white. For a long time he could not trust himself to speak.
The fight was a hard one, and it was not yet over. She was a challenge to
all that he tried to master. He wondered why there was a smile in her
lovely, soft eyes, while in his own there must have been the hardness of
steel. And he wondered long afterward how she could have possessed the
calmness to say:

"Simmy must have been insane with joy. He has talked of nothing else for
days."

But he did not know that in her secret heart she was crying out in
ecstasy: "God, how I love him--and _how he loves me_!"

"He is a good old scout," said he lamely, hardly conscious of the words.
Then abruptly: "I can't stay, Anne. I came down to tell you that--that I
was a dog to say what I did in my note to you. I knew the construction you
would put upon the--well, the injunction. It wasn't fair. I led you to
believe that if you came down here to live that sometime I would--"

"Just a moment, Braden," she interrupted, steadily. "You are finding it
very difficult to say just the right thing to me. Let me help you, please.
I fear that I have a more ready tongue than you and certainly I am less
agitated. I confess that your note decided me. I confess that I believed
my coming here to live would result in--well, forgiveness is as good a word
as any at this time. Now you have come to