Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1917-04-25

They sank together down on the
bench. What" she faltered, will
become of me now?"
You are better off now than you
ever were, Nan. You've gained this
moment a big brother, lover you
can drag around the world after you
with a piece of thread"
You act as If I could"
II mean it; it's true. I'm pledged
to you forever-you, to me forever.
We'll keep our secret till we can
manage things; and we will manage
them. Everything will come right,
Nan. because everything must come
right"
Il only hope you are not wrong"
she murmured, her eyes turned to-
ward the somber. mountains.
CHAPTER XVII.
Danger.
When she tiptoed into her uncle's
room at midnight, Mans heart beat
as the wings of bird beat from the
broken door of cage into a forbid
den sky of happiness. She had left
the room girl; she returned wo-
man.
Sleep she did not expect or even
ask for; the night was all too short
TO think of those tense, fearful mo-
ments that had pledged her to her
lover. When the anXieties of her
situation overwhelmed her, as they
would again and again, she felt her.
self in the arms of this strange, reso-
lutte man whom all her own hated
and whom she knew she already
loved beyond all power to put away.
In her heart, she had tried this more
than once-she knew she could not,
n
do it, again.
She rejoiced in his love. She trust
ed. When he spoke she believed this
man whom no one around her
would believe: and she, who never
had believed what other men avow-
ed, and who detested their avowals,
believed De Spain, and secretly,
guiltiy. glowed in every word Of his
devotion and breathed faint in its
every careSs.
Night could hardly come fast
enough, after the next long day. A
hundred times during that day she
reminded herself, while the slow.
majestic sun shone simmering on the
hot desert, that she had promised to
steal out into the grounds the minute
darkness fell - he would be waiting.
A hundred times in the long after
noon Nan looked into the cloudless
western sky and with puny, eager
hands would have pushed the lag
ging orb on it's course that she might
sooner give herself into the arms
where she felt her place so sure, her
honor safe, her helplessness so pro-
tected, herself so lovec.
How her cheeks burned after sup
per when she asked her uncle for
leave to post a letter downtown. How
breathless with apprehension she
halted as De Spain stepped from
the shadow of the trees and drew
her mportunately beneath them for
the kiss that had burned on her
troubled lips all day. How, girl-like
knowing his caresses were all her
own - knowing she could at an in
slant call forth enough to smother
her - she tyrannized his importun-
ing, and like n lovely miser, hoard
ed her responsiveness under calm
eye and laconic whispers until, when
she did give back his eagerness, she
made his senses reel. .
How dreamily she listened to every
word he let fall in his outpouring of
devotion; how gravely she put up
her hand to restrain his busy in
trusion, and asked IL he knew that
no man in the world, least of all her
fierce and burly cousin, had ever
touched her lips until he himself
forced a kiss on them the night be-
fore. And now!" She hid her face
against his shoulder. "Oh, Henry.
how / love you! I'm so ashamed !
couldn't tell you If it weren't night;
I'll never look you in the face again
in the daytime"
And when he told her how little
he himself had had to do with, and
how little he knew about girls, even
from boyhood, how she feigned not
to believe. and believed him still!
They were two children raised In