of those two young people so reprehensibly glad at being even for the
moment in each other's arms.




XV

An hour later and still the grand news hasn't been told. In fact very
little that Mrs. Ellicott would regard as either sensible or reasonable has
happened at all. Though they do not know it the conversation has been oddly
like that of two dried desert-travellers who have suddenly come upon water
and for quite a while afterwards find it hard to think of anything else.
But finally:

"Dearest, dearest, what was the grand news?" says Oliver half-drowsily. "We
must talk it over, dear, I suppose, I guess, oh, we must--oh, but you're so
sweet--" and he relapses again into speechlessness.

They are close together, he and she now. Their lips meet--and meet--with a
sweet touch--with a long pressure--children being good to each other--cloud
mingling with gleaming cloud.

"Ollie dear." Nancy's voice comes from somewhere as far away and still as
if she were talking out of a star. "Stop kissing me. I can't think when you
kiss me, I can only feel you be close. If you want to hear about that news,
that is," she adds, her lips hardly moving.

All that Oliver wants to do is to hold her and be quiet--to make out of
the stuffy room, the nervous rushing of noise under the window, the air