Island in the Dawn
Page 18
“I think we might find a priest to bless us, but we’ll leave it at that! Our marriage wasn’t a farce—it was the most wonderful day of my life.”
“Oh, darling!” he said. “The night of our marriage was the most agonizing I’ve ever lived through—except, perhaps, last night. No man ever wanted his wife as I wanted you, but I was consumed with jealousy of Manners, and in any case I thought you didn’t want me near you.”
“Oh!” she said. Suddenly her face was flooded with color, and she hid it against him.
There was an interval during which he kissed her as he had never kissed her before, and she gave him back kiss for kiss. Then, his conscience smiting him because she had had such a dreadful night, and whatever she said it was high time she was in bed, he drew her to her feet
“I’m going to take you back now, darling—I’m going to take you home! Whatever we plan to do with our lives, it will be our home always! ... Somewhere to bring you back to!”
She leaned against him in the brilliant sunlight that was all about them, and looked up at him searchingly.
“Tell me, Paul—tell me truthfully!—what do you wish to do?”
“What do you wish to do?”
“No!” She touched his lips, because they were keeping the truth back from her. “I must know what you want to do above everything else?”
“Have children, and a wife who will never love them quite as much as she loves me, and sail a boat, and start an air-field here ... Perhaps induce other people to build here, so that we can become a little colony. A reasonably civilized colony! With a doctor to keep an eye on my wife’s health—particularly when she presenting me with my children!—and a church where people can be married when they want to. And years and years of producing bigger and better grape-fruit!”
“Oh, Paul!” Her eyes were shining like lamps. “That’s what I want, too ... Oh, that’s what I want more than anything else.”
THE END