She wheeled upon me and clasped her hands together behind my neck,
looking up at me with trouble-shrouded eyes, and with brows that were
slightly corrugated by the perplexities of the moment.
"Listen to me, sweetheart," she said, with her face so close to mine
that I had all I could do to refrain from interrupting her. "We must
not belittle the perils that lie yonder. There are two lives in danger
now, for if anything should happen to you, it would kill me also. I am
selfish now, Dubravnik, in my concern for you, for after all it is
myself whom I would protect, through you. But we must not belittle the
danger. I know that you are brave and daring; that you have no fear. I
realize that you view with contempt the perils that beset you, but oh,
my love, suppose that you should not escape."
"Why suppose it, Zara? I am here; the danger is there. We need not
anticipate it. Let us leave it to be met at the proper moment,
forgetting for this once, that it exists."
"No, no, we must control ourselves. We have been children for an hour
or more, forgetful of all things save love; but now let us be what we
are, a man and a woman who have perils to face."
"And who, I trust, have the courage to meet them, Zara."
"Ay, courage; but courage alone does not always accomplish the sought
for end. Courage alone is not inevitably competent to meet and overcome
conditions. And we need more than courage, Dubravnik; we need
resource."
"Resource is something with which we are both moderately well
provided," I suggested, smiling, and still refusing to accept her words
as seriously as she intended them.
She stamped her foot impatiently upon the rug, and frowned a little,
with a touch of petulance in her manner that was the most bewitching
thing I had yet seen about her.
"Do be your own self for a moment," she commanded me, withdrawing from
my restraining arm and stepping away out of my reach.
"How can I be myself, when I see and realize only you?" I bantered her.
Then came another transition almost as startling as it was complete.
She threw herself bodily forward into my embrace, clasping her clinging
arms about me, while she buried her beautiful face between my chin and
shoulder and burst into a passion of sobs which convulsed her so
utterly that I was alarmed.
I had tried her too far with my bantering attitude, and my apparent
indifference to a threatening and terrible fate.
"Zara!" I said. "My love!"
But she only sobbed on and on, and I held her crushed against me until
the storm should pass, knowing that a great calm would succeed it, and
that her present expression of emotion was only the safety valve for
all that had passed between us since the incident when our lips met for
the first time.