Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman
of the East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that
law which England's poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking
of a love so deep as to be sacred.
Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her
to the settee between the two high windows and placed her there
amid Oriental cushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen.
He knelt at her feet and, holding both her hands, looked into her
face with that wondering expression in which there was something
incredulous and something sorrowful; a look of great and selfless
tenderness. The face of Naida was lighted up, and her big eyes
filled with tears. Disengaging one of her jewelled hands, she
ruffled Nicol Brinn's hair.
"My Nicol," she said, tenderly. "Have I changed so much?"
Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very
musical. To the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest
music in the world.
"Naida," he whispered. "Naida. Even yet I dare not believe that
you are here."
"You knew I would come?"
"How was I to know that you would see my message?"
She opened her closed left hand and smoothed out a scrap of torn
paper which she held there. It was from the "Agony" column of
that day's Times.
N. November 23, 1913. N. B. See Telephone Directory.
"I told you long, long ago that I would come if ever you wanted
me.
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