Ward of Lucifer

by Mary Burchell

  "Yes, I do. I'm not really ill, you know." "No. I know."

  But perhaps he thought how nearly he had lost her, all the same, because he sat down on the side of the bed and took her in his arms.

  She leant back contentedly against him. "Do you like being in love with me?" she asked ridiculously.

  "Do I what!"

  "Do you like being in love with me? You looked so serious just now that I wondered if you were happy."

  He laughed. "I'm as happy as a man dares to be when he's still very near to having lost all that he cares for."

  She reached up and kissed his cheek.

  "I'm not all that you care for, darling," she reminded him. "You still mind terribly about losing Munley, don't you?"

  He looked faintly surprised and said: "No." "No? But, only this morning"

  "All values have changed since this morning," he said curtly.

  "But I thought"

  "Don't you understand?" He went suddenly pale an spoke almost fiercely. "To-day I nearly lost you. What other loss matters in the world beside that? What sort of echoing horror do you suppose Munley would have been to me, if! hadn't had you?"

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said very quietly: "Yes, I see," and drew his head down and kissed him.

  "You do see, don't you? You do see that everything has changed for me?" She could not have believed that that cool, well pitched voice could sound so rough and agitated.

  "Why, yes, my dear." Surprisingly, she was aware that she was speaking soothingly. And then, suddenly he slid to his knees and hid his face against her.

  "Norma, I've never cared before what people say to me, but I care now desperately. All sorts of well-meaning people will tell you that I'm not the man to make you a good husband. And they'll be right, in a I way. I'm not the stuff good husbands are made of. t Only I love you, darling. I love you. Please believe I that. I don't know why you should believe me, but if t you doubt it, I don't really care about anything else in the world."

  He ceased speaking as abruptly as he had begun and, looking at his bent head, Norma thought wonderingly: "Is this the man they said was as proud as Lucifer?"

  "I believe you," she said quietiy. "You don't even have to tell me, you know. And, as for what people say of you they told me quite a lot about you, between them, before I ever saw you, and much more afterwards. Some of it was true. Some of it wasn't. But none of it mattered. I knew more about you than anyone else. And what I knew I loved."

  He gave a little gasping laugh of relief and looked up at her, and she thought, "Did I really once think his eyes were cold?"

  "What have I ever done to deserve your love?" he said with a smile.

  Norma put out her hand and stroked his hair, and, from the quality of the caress, he knew that his ward had ceased to be the girl who charmed him and had become the woman he loved.

  "You loved me that's all," she said slowly. "They are the two halves of the divine circle. To love and to be loved. That's why everything seems so simple and so perfect."

  And, as he drew her to him and kissed her, she added softly: "The first day I came into your house, you said you hoped I should never feel unwanted again. I never shall. I know it now."

  THE END