'
'Then that's settled.'
'But not with you, Charles.'
He said nothing for a time. She was sitting up, her hands clasped on
her lap, and as she looked at him she half regretted her last words.
This was how they would sit in the little house, by the fire,
surrounded by their own possessions, with everything clean and bright
and, as he had said, very cosy. She had never had a home.
Suddenly she leaned towards him and put her head on his knee. His hand
fell on her hair. 'This doesn't mean anything,' she murmured; 'but I
was just thinking. You're tempting me again. First with the ring
because it was so pretty, and now with a house.'
'How else am I to get you?' he cried out. 'And you know you were
feeling lonely. That's why I came.'
'You thought it was your chance?'
'Yes,' he said. 'I don't know the ordinary things, but I know the
others.'
'I wonder how,' she said, and he answered with the one word, 'Love,'
in a voice so deep and solemn that she laughed.
'Do you know,' she said, 'I have never had a home. I've lived in other
people's houses, with their ugly furniture, their horrid sticky
curtains--'
'I shall take that house to-morrow.'
'But you can't go on collecting things like this. Houses and rings--'
'The ring's in my pocket now.'
'It must stay there, Charles. I ought not to keep my head on your
knee; but it's comfortable and I have no conscience. None.' She sat
up, brushing his chin with her hair.
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