"Perhaps not—any more."
"But you know you never really did."
"Never?"
"No. At worst you only opened my eyes."
"Well, Barrett," she said, after a short silence, "I think I've always rather felt that: that you understood, deep down—that you weren't quite shockable, in fact."
"Yes," he said meditatively. They strolled along, saying nothing more for a little time.
At length she asked: "Do you remember the time we swam for the Allenhurst medal?"
"Of course I do," he nodded.
"You remember how even we were—how we outdistanced all the others?"
He smiled queerly. "They hadn't a chance!"
"Right-O, Barrett. We knew how to stroke in those days! Well," she continued after a moment, "and you haven't forgotten how I won the race—and why?"
"A sudden cramp—I thought I was done for!"
"Oh, no, my friend." They were both smiling. "Time has played tricks with your memory. It wasn't a cramp. Now think, thinkhard. You went lazy at the finish. And so how could I help pulling in ahead in spite of myself?"
"Marjory, I—"
"Be not forsworn, my friend. Let's agree that you went lazy at the finish. After all these years, can't we? It was a singular thing," she went on, half gravely and half smilingly. "You know I was just at the age.... Well, it had a most singular effect upon me. Yes, I may say it altered the whole course of my life, Barrett." She laughed softly.
"Great heavens, Marjory, you don't honestly mean ...!"
"Well, you see, I was one of the first of the 'new' women, and I just simply rebelled. That was all. You haven't forgotten how I sent the medal back to you?"
He looked quite serious. "I know," he said softly. "I was stupid about it for a long time.There didn't seem to be any sense in your sending it back. In fact...." He hesitated.
"Do let's be perfectly frank!" she invited, with another short laugh.
"Well, I thought it a wilful and childish attitude to take. I didn't want them to say I'd beaten a woman. We were still living on the fringe of chivalry, you know, when it was more important to walk on the proper side of a woman and tip your hat to her at a certain angle than to give her the vote. I was brought up in a delightful Victorian atmosphere, where it wasn't considered the thing even to beat a woman at tennis, if you could decently help it."
"Ah, yes!" cried Marjory. "Just think of it! But gradually you grew wiser, Barrett—you and the world."
"Yes," he muttered, "I and the world."
"You came to see...."
"Yes, I came at last to see that you can't go lazy at the finish any more. I told you, and I meant it, that at last I've capitulated—capitulated at every point."
They walked on a little way in the moonlight, close to the waves. All at once a bold thrill of tenderness came on him. He drew the woman into his arms. She responded slowly. Afterward she professed to be not quite sure whether they had kissed.
But there was a witness. Oh, yes—there was a witness who could emphatically and joyfully testify that they did kiss, and that they kissed more thanonce. The witness, of course, was our ubiquitous little pagan god, who had abandoned at least a half dozen most promising cases at the roast to chase for a moment down the beach after this pair of obdurate mortals who had held off for twenty years.
At about ten o'clock the Rev. Needham took out his watch and thought it was time he and his little party set their faces homeward. Mrs. Needham had been talking gentle gossip with Mrs. Blake and the wife of the minister from Dubuque; but she got up at once and obediently took her husband's arm.
"We go to bed early at Beachcrest," she explained. They went to bed early in town, for that matter, though the full truth went uncommunicated.
"Where are the girls?" demanded the Rev. Needham, looking anxiously round.
Louise came up hurriedly, followed by Barry. "Are you starting home now, papa?" she asked, with what sounded strangely like eagerness.
"Well, we thought we'd just be starting along. It's—it's not late yet, you know. We'll just slip on ahead and get the cottage lighted."
"I think we'll go along now too."
"Oh, I wouldn't hurry. The fire's quite good yet."
"Lynndal is tired," she insisted. "He didn't sleep more than a couple of hours on the boat." And she gave him a very complex glance in which there was something whisperingly like an element of tenderness.
"Well," capitulated Mrs. Needham.
But Louise was only one daughter. Where was Hilda?
Where indeed? Wherewasshe?
Anxious eyes explored the assembled company. Most of the young people had mysteriously made off, some this way and some that, but all alike into the friendly embrace of the darkness which lay so thick beyond the glow of the fire. Where was Hilda?
"I think I saw her with the lad—is it Leslie?" said Lynndal Barry.
"Oh—Leslie," repeated Mrs. Needham.
"You didn't notice which way they went?" asked the minister.
"No, I'm afraid I didn't."
Then Louise came to the rescue. She pointed miserably, yet also with a faint, new fact-facing grimness, toward the lake.
"They haven't taken out thecanoe...!" Alfred Needham was horror struck.
"It's perfectly calm, papa," Louise reminded him dryly.
Then, indeed, they saw the canoe, on the moonlit water. Both Leslie and Hilda were paddling. But they were not exactly paddling toward the shore.
"She knows it's not allowed, out like this at all hours of the night!" cried the minister.
But his wife reassured him in her gentle way. "Alf, I wouldn't worry. Leslie will look out for her."
Louise lowered her head. Then she moved almost imperceptibly closer to Lynndal. At length the homeward march was begun. But the Rev. Needham stopped again suddenly, looking at his wife in a helpless way.
"Anna,where's your sister?"
"Dear me!" cried Anna Needham. "We were starting right off without her!"
"Is that Miss Whitcom?" asked Barry.
"Who?"
"Where?"
"The lady just ahead, coming this way."
It was true. There was a lady approaching along the beach. But she was with a man, and the man....
"Alf!" whispered Anna, gripping her husband's arm.
"Well?"
"Oh—look!"
"What is it, Anna?"
She murmured in almost an ecstasy: "Why, he's got his arm right round her waist!"
The awful intelligence that this was indeed Marjory, and that a man had his arm around her waist, smote the minister's consciousness with peculiar and climactic force.
Hilda and Leslie took their own good time about coming in off the lake. It was so wonderful out there in the moonlight.
"I've had a perfectly grand time!" she told him,her voice thrilling richly with conviction. She knew she had had a grand time, and whatever might be the sequel when she faced her parents, the grandness would never, never diminish.
They ascended the slight sand elevation and reached the steps leading up to the porch. Moonlight patched and patterned the steps. They did not go any farther.
Hilda sat down, drawing her knees and chin together, while Leslie whistled softly.
"Will your father be mad?" he asked.
"Oh, no!" the girl exclaimed, with the full and emphatic authority of one who is gravely in doubt. "Why?" she added. "It isn't late, is it?"
Leslie pulled out his watch. "N-o-o. Only twenty after eleven."
"Twentyaftereleven? Twenty aftereleven! Oh, my goodness! I didn't have any idea it was so late. It seemed as though we were only out there a couple of minutes!"
"It did to me, too," admitted Leslie.
The lateness of the hour, however, appeared to exert no immediate influence upon either his recognition of the wisdom of departure or hers of withdrawal to bed. Leslie swung back and forth, clinging to a slender birch tree which grew quite close to the cottage. Its silver leaves crashed gently together, as though a breeze were thrusting its way through.
"I could simply sit out here all night!" Hilda declared.
Leslie admitted he could too. Presently he did sit down. He sat down beside Hilda, but, as before, one step below her. It was certainly a lovely night. His head somehow found her knee; then Eros could hardly contain himself! Hilda ran her fingers very lightly through his hair. They did not bother to talk much.
At length he asked: "Shall we go out after raspberries tomorrow? Would you like to?"
"Oh, Les—that would be lots of fun!"
"All right."
"Shall we take a lunch so we won't have to hurry?"
"Good idea."
"What time will you come, Les?"
"What time do you want me?"
"Oh—I don't know."
"Right after breakfast?"
"Oh, yes!" Her answer to this question held no slightest inflection of doubt.
"What time do you have breakfast?"
"Never later than eight o'clock, and it only takes me a minute to eat!"
Leslie appeared to have forgotten all about going back to the city, after all....
There was another warm silence. The boy had no idea of starting for his own cottage, nor had Hilda any idea of going to bed. It didn't, for some strange reason, occur to either that the parent Needhams might be waiting up in there, and that the minister, harassed over dim prospects of ruin perceived in therelationship of his daughter and the man who handled the Western interests, was attaining an attitude of really appalling austerity. No, they didn't bother their spoony young heads about any of these things, until all at once the cottage door opened, letting out upon them a flood of light from the living room.
"Hello, papa!" cried Hilda, guiltily and very affectionately. She jumped up.
The Rev. Needham did not say much out on the porch; but when Leslie had crept off, after hurriedly squeezing the girl's hand, and Hilda had been marshalled within, the law was laid down with unusual vigour. Mrs. Needham took it all rather more quietly, primarily because she did not share, in its full poignancy, her husband's alarm over Louise. Of course she was concerned. But the poise of climax was beginning to assert itself. No doubt tomorrow, if a reign of chaos really did set in, Mrs. Needham would rule over the turmoil like a very judge. She would become dominant, as when she went to rescue her daughter from the Potomac. It was perhaps her only complex.
Hilda had just been sent up to bed, rather subdued, but in her heart immensely radiant, when Marjory arrived home. O'Donnell wanted to hang around awhile, but she wouldn't let him. No, she positively refused to linger any longer in the moonlight. She reproved herself a little. She reproved him a little, too. They had already been quite romantic enoughfor one night. And she hustled him off with a lack of ceremony which went with her years and her temperament. All the same, he managed to steal a glancing kiss. And Eros—who I forgot to say had remained in hiding out there—Eros told himself that this was infinitely better for his purposes than a mere handshake!
When he had gone, she sat down on the steps alone, for a moment. It was so wonderful—life was—and the night. She watched the moon declining over a just-troubled sea. Then abruptly she became conscious of voices in the cottage living room.
"Now, your sister!"
"Well, Alf?"
"She's still out!"
"Oh, Marjory knows the way."
"But at such an hour!"
"It's only a quarter to twelve, Alf."
"I know how the Point will be talking tomorrow!"
"Alf, I—"
"Oh—I've nothing to say. No, Anna, I realize she's your sister. But I must tell you what I think." And he was back once more on the topic that so turbulently absorbed him. "I think Marjory has been led into an unfortunate way of living. She's always run so free and never cared what people thought or said. I really don't know how the Point is going to take her." And after a moment's pause, during which the minister could be heard pacing up and down: "Anna, what do we know about the nature ofher life in Tahulamaji? Has she told you anything definitely about that? No. But she's hinted...." He paced on, and presently added: "Now here she is, just back; and the very first thing she does is walk all over with a man's arm round her!"
Miss Whitcom abandoned the wonderful night. When she entered, her sister smiled and brightened generally. But her brother-in-law seemed rather taken off his feet.
Marjory wanted to make the minister feel perfectly at home, so she sat down and began rocking cosily.
"How snug you're fixed here!" she murmured. "How happy you ought to be, Alfred, in your little nest! Ah, it's fine to be in the bosom of a family again. You know, I feel somehow as though I'd come back from an absence of nearly a lifetime. It's a curious feeling, to come back like this. Like a sort of prodigal, Alfred—just fancy! But Ididhave to go away," she pleaded earnestly. "In the beginning, it was quite necessary! You see there were such a lot of things I wanted to find out, and I felt from the very first—Anna, you remember how I used to talk to you about life, and all that?—well, I somehow felt I shouldn't find out anything just sitting in the front parlour with a family album spread open on my lap. You see, it wasn't what the others were like that I wanted to be like, and it wasn't what all the others had done that I wanted to do in the world. So I broke away. Yes, the prodigal left, to roam far and wide. Now that we're chatting here all snug, Imay tell you, Alfred, that it's been pretty interesting and pretty broadening."
"Marjie, dear—"
"Now, Anna,don'tlet's go up to bed just yet. Notjustyet. It is so cosy down here, and I'm much too excited to sleep. Just a little while. I—I want to visit with Alfred a little about my life in Tahulamaji." The atmosphere in the living room grew subtly electric. The minister sat rigid. But the speaker went on in a cheery, simple way: "Just think, just think! When you would be sitting down in your nice house in Ohio, there I was...." She interrupted herself with a laugh. "It does sound rather dreadful, now doesn't it? You in Ohio and me.... Fancy my going way off there alone—for you know the Tahulamajians were once cannibals!—all by myself, and—andliving! Gracious, how extraordinary it does sound!"
She rocked with folded arms and peeped at her brother-in-law out of the wicked corners of her eyes.
"But it's such fun," she went on, a little solemnly, "keeping your personal life all ship-shape—all ship-shape, Alfred—and yet really feeling, as you go along, that you're not missing a single thing that's worth while. No, not a single blessed thing, Alfred. When I went to Tahulamaji I hadn't an awfully clear notion of what I was going to do there. You see I thought I'd just have a look-around, as we say. Oh, Alfred," she chatted, "such a lovely spot! So warmand tropical, with music at night over the water.... Alfred, how you would love it there!"
He shifted uneasily, and she went on: "What I did, though—what my life in Tahulamaji really turned out to be—wasn't after all very poetic, or even essentially tropical, when it comes to that. Yes, I've often thought I might have chosen a more harmonious vocation. But one must grasp what one can and be content. The fact is, Alfred, I went into the drygoods business."
"Drygoods!" cried her sister.
"Yes—just think of that—and after all the really exciting things I've done in my life! But that's exactly what I did, Anna. Yes, that's what my life was in Tahulamaji. And you've simply no idea how the thing took! The natives, you see, were just beginning to wear clothes—regular clothes, I mean, dear brother. And in a few months I had an establishment—anestablishment, I tell you, with departments and counters and clerks.... It was perfectly beautiful to see them skipping about, and the little cash boxes running on their tracks overhead...."
"Marjie,really?"
"Yes, indeed. Of course that came just a little later on, after electricity had been introduced. The arrangement was somewhat crude, but it worked. Anna, you've no idea the things you can do if you really set your heart on them! Yes, in time we even had cash boxes overhead, and there was I, up in thecage where all the cash boxes went to, making change and keeping the books! That's what makes me laugh so, when I think of it: you living in your nice house in Ohio, and me up in the little cage with the cash coming in by trolley!"
"Marjory, Marjory!"
"The third year I had a dressmaker over from San Francisco, and the business trebled at once. The poor dears had been trying to make their own clothes, but of course they didn't know much about styles. I had a circulating library of pattern books, but it was a great day, I tell you, when the dressmaker arrived! They closed the schools, and a reception was held. Even the Queen came down the line! I have a manager now," she concluded, "running the business. I said I simply had to get off for a rest. Alfred," she soared to her climax, "your sister has worked herself weary and rich. How much will the new parish house cost?"
The Rev. Needham gasped. This is really not an exaggeration. He gasped—and it was, this time, no merely inner gasping, either. Marjory—the new parish house ...!
"Why, Marjory!" he cried, his heart deeply touched. There sounded again here that former note of appeal or even pathos.
Nevertheless, long afterward, when the fine new parish house was all finished, and the church could hold its own a little while longer in a world which was changing so rapidly, a grim spectre stalkedbetween the minister and her magnificent donation. It was the spectre of the Bishop whose bed she had seen made up. Did Marjory thinkhewould sleep on two mattresses, like the Bishop? And buy an upper for his golf sticks?
Miss Whitcom had risen to bid them good night. The indignant cottage lamp had begun to sputter and fail. It had never before been kept burning so late. But she lingered long enough to give them the full benefit of one of her delightful and so characteristic shafts of bluntness.
"O'Donnell," she said, "has stood by all these years. Think of it! Think of its taking so long as that to be sure! Of course it wasn't that I ever cared two straws for anybody else. O'Donnell's never had any active competition, except from my overwhelming notions about being free to work out my life. Well, I've had my freedom, and I've worked it out. And now—well, he's asked me again—tonight. But what do you think? I haven't given him a definite answer yet—notyet! I'm going over to the Elmbrook Inn as soon as the sun's up, though. I guess I'll stand down under his window and call out to him softly. And when he comes to the window, I'll say: 'Barrett, I've had my fling!' Alfred—you don't think I could find my way through tonight ...?"
"Marjory! Of course not! Tomorrow, if you must...."
But she chattered gaily and unquenchably on. "I don't know how it's all going to turn out, I'm sure—about our future, I mean. You see, if he'll come along to Tahulamaji, I'll sell him a half interest in the business, and we could let the manager go. But I doubt if he'll do it. It's so far, and then, you see, he's been with the Babbits so long. I can fancy one's growing very much attached to the Babbits!"
"And if he doesn't want to go to Tahulamaji?" asked her sister.
"If he doesn't? If he doesn't? Well, then I'll have to followhislead."
The Rev. Needham had a sudden flash of wholly disorganizing inspiration. "Marjory, you don't mean Babbit & Babbit?"
But it was just exactly what she did mean! "Yes, in that case I'll travel for Babbit & Babbit. Must be doing something, I can tell you, with all these parish houses to be built! And it won't be my first job on the road, by any manner of means, either!"
Then she kissed her sister affectionately on the mouth and her brother-in-law affectionately on the cheek. And then the cottage lamp went out.
When Hilda went up to bed she thought Louise already asleep, for she lay there with her eyes closed. Hilda undressed as stealthily as possible, and crept in beside her sister. At first she felt so excited that it seemed to her she must surely lie awake all night. But as a matter of fact, her eyes drooped at once, and in five minutes she was asleep.
Then it was that Louise stirred and opened her eyes. They were very wide and very full of perplexity. She had not been sleeping, but had feigned sleep because she dreaded the ordeal of talking. She wanted to be alone, and she wanted to think—all night. A feverish zeal was upon her.
Barry was abed too. His light had gone out and his room was quite silent. Was he asleep? She wondered. Or was he, too, lying there in the dark with eyes wide open, thinking?
The walk back from the roast had been a very silent one. The day had been crowded with emotion, and during the journey back to Beachcrest the tenseness had seemed, curiously, to be eased a little. At least there seemed a tacit understanding that, whatever the further developments might be, tomorrow must do. Tomorrow, tomorrow! Tonightall was hazed and half drowned in unshed, groping tears. Even emotion itself, through sheer, blessed weariness, was subtly obscured. So the walk had been silent, while somehow both had felt as though the air had cleared a little. It was easier to breathe.
They had stood together a moment on the porch.
"Goodnight," she said huskily.
"Goodnight, Louise," he returned gravely, giving her hand just a frank, brief pressure.
She wanted to throw herself at his feet. The impulse to do something splendid and expiating swept over her almost irresistibly. She wanted to implore his forgiveness—would that set their lives in order? If this were to be the end, she felt there ought to be something at least vaguely stupendous about it.
"Louise, dear—what is it?" he asked, quite tenderly and calmly, yet with an intensity, too, which seemed like a hot, reproachful breath against one's very soul.
She swayed a little, almost as though she might be about to fall in a faint. He touched her arm gently.
The opportunity passed. "It's nothing," she murmured. "I'm tired, that's all—so tired!" And she did not throw herself at his feet, or do anything splendid at all.
It was true, she was very tired. She expected to drop at once into a merciful drugged sleep. It had been like that after the affair with Richard. But now, lo! she found herself more wide awake, it seemed, than she had ever been. The weariness seemed allslipping from her, and her mind grew quite vibrant, as with a slowly dawning purpose.
Ah, tomorrow!
Would the situation be as tragic then? Could it be otherwise than tragic? But perhaps—perhaps they would see things more clearly....
"Yes," she thought, "I'll go to sleep now and let tomorrow bring what it must."
Mañana, mañana!
But this was not to be. She closed her eyes. She tried to turn into a snug and sleepy position. But she could not woo sleep; and every effort merely sharpened her senses. Again she found herself lying in the dark with wide eyes, and went on thinking, thinking.
What was the meaning of this strange commotion? Phantoms—of the past—presaging phantoms endlessly to follow.... At dawn she had gone out blithely enough to welcome her lover. He had come. And then.... But even before his coming, that curious battle had set in. Not his hat or the twist of his profile.... Phantoms. Phantoms rising up in her heart like some sinister cloud of retribution. And their single adversary: "You are mine, all mine...."
Now, in this sombre hour shunned by sleep, the conflict achieved an effect of climax: she felt it to be that, obscurely yet with a desperate poignancy—felt that an issue precious in the scheme of her unfolding destiny faced decision. Legions of spent loves wentby in marshalled battle trim. With an inward cry she watched them as they passed. Perfume still lingering in the house, though with the guest departed. Ghosts of a many-vizaged passion, homing at length, for the fulfilment of a barter Faust-like in its essence.
How lavish she had always been: how free! Shambles, now the glamour was gone stale. A monstrous cheapening—a heart flung out to-let in a public street. Yes, how easily and extravagantly she had spent herself—a profligate spending, for what the moment could return. Here, at last, was a love that demanded: "You must be mine, all mine—you must belong to me forever!" Curious, that of them all—of all the voices that had spoken of love before—it should be Lynndal's which, in fancy, thus first framed a so momentous contract!
He had been always so modest; in the beginning, to be loved in return had figured for him as a too, too generous conjecture. Gradually, however, there had been a return. Their lives had drawn together. The fact that this love had, from almost the very beginning, been challenged to the bridging of such distance began to assume for Louise a new and arresting significance. There had been something in it, in its very fibre, rising above any mere convenience of contact: a phenomenon unique, it struck her, in the long and turbulent history of her heart interests. Those letters.... "That was just it," she had groped when confronted by Aunt Marjie. Romancing appeared to have carried her far, how far! Mirage.And yet, behind the mirage a something deeper lurked. She sensed this now; but all the weary day she had sensed it also, dimly. Lynndal. Hitherto, the man himself had barely figured. Yet ever he had been there, too. He had come from far in the west to put a ring on her finger, and had found her in a panic of goblin doubt. That fancied voice in the shriek of steam: "Mine—mine!" Then the kiss which exposed her dilemma. Butbehindthese things—the man; the man himself. And what was this that seemed for so long, in a fine and utter silence, to have been building? Sanctuary!...
Her mind, as she lay here in the dark, became indeed a battleground for this ultimate climax of struggle. An unimagined realm they made of it. Her heart beat faster and her cheeks grew hot. To-let, in a public street. "Richard! I have done what he would have done—what he did! I am no better—no better!" She writhed, and the bitterness did not leave her—carried her instead to a yet more awful conclusion: "I am no better than a—than a—" The terrible word scorched across her heart, leaving a scar behind. Sobs shook her body, and the tears were bitter tears of hopelessness and regret.
But then, slowly, the bitterness eased a little; and, full of amazement, she felt a shy presence of freshness stealing mysteriously in, as from some empire where struggle is no citizen. A strange and beautiful sense of disentanglement. In the previous moment of unwithheld relentless purgatory, she had caughtthe rhythm of that something—that something behind the mirage! So that, in time, as she lay relaxed, with tears undried on her face, it came to her that just one fact remained, of all the febrile facts which, out of a long inglorious past, had attained the immortality of ghost-hood. Just one—one "living" fact: Lynndal!
Until today he had but filled a niche—but carried on the pattern of the many; now, however, the power to stem this ruinous tide revealed itself as at hand, just waiting to be seized—the courage to give herself completely, and to achieve a love as steadfast and unchanging as his had proved to be.
The night wore on. The moon grew sleepy and drooped in the starry western sky. But Louise did not sleep. There was high drama in her heart, and she could not sleep till it was all played out.
She began laying plans. What would her life be like if she married Lynndal? Dry-farming. But later he would run for Congress—perhaps he would be Governor some day. And in the meantime, love—and there would perhaps be children.... Security! Peace! An anchorage—something to steady her and set her wayward heart at rest!
"I'm the kind of girl," she told herself, with a grimness which still went hand in hand with the orgy of honesty and fearless insight that had been making these dark hours so memorable, "—the kind thatmustbe married. I—I'm not safe otherwise—not to be trusted."
And then her mood lightened again a little and grew grimly whimsical: "They say a minister's children are always the worst!"
She must have fallen into a little sleep; for she opened her eyes with a start and gazed up at a slight abrasion in the shingle roof through which morning blinked. For a moment she wondered why she had waked so early. The July birds were all aflutter outside. It was a radiant summer dawn.
Hilda lay beside her, sound asleep. The house was very still. It was tomorrow!
Downstairs on the mantelpiece in the cottage living room the Dutch clock was ticking in its wiry, indignant way. There came a whirr—solike a wheeze of decrepitude. And then it struck: one, two, three, four....
Very quietly Louise slipped out of bed. She did not want to waken Hilda, but she had a sudden desire to be out under the sky.
Quickly putting on her clothes, she stole from the cottage. The morning was very still and fresh. She felt as though she must shout the gladness that was in her. Tomorrow! Who could possibly have foreseen that it would be like this?
Louise climbed up out of the valley toward the little rustic "tea-house" where Leslie had waited for her yesterday at dawn. She thought she would sit there a long, long time, trying to realize her great new contrite happiness. She reached the door. Afigure stirred. Lynndal was there. He had risen even before she was awake, for slumber had not come to him at all. When he saw her face, he could not believe the new happiness that seemed rushing upon him out of the dark chaos of their yesterday.
She stretched out her hands to him. She snuggled up against him with a brief, glad sigh. "I want to be yours, all yours, Lynndal," she said softly and just a little humorously. "I want to be yours forever and ever. I don't want to belong to any one but you!"