and I
felt I was safe at last. I raised my hand and pressed it against John's
wet lashes until he could let me speak, and I was melted into his very
breast itself.

"Molly," he said, when enough tenderness had come back into his arms to
let me breathe, "you have almost killed me!"

"You!" I exclaimed, crowding still closer, or at least trying to. "It's
not _you_; it's I that am killed, and you did it! I know you don't
really want me, but I can't help that. I'd rather you do the suffering
with me than to do it myself away from you. I'm so hungry and thirsty
for you that--that I can't diet any longer!". I put the case the
strongest way I knew how.

"Want you, Molly?" he almost sobbed, and I felt his heart pounding hard
next to my shoulder.

"Yes, want me!" I answered with more spirit than breath left in me. "I
refuse to believe you are as stupid as I am, and anybody with even an
ordinary amount of brains must have seen how hard I was fighting for
you. I feel sure I left no stone unturned. Some of them I can already
think back and see myself tugging at, and it makes me hot all over. I'm
foolish and always was, so I'm to be excused for acting that awful way,
but you are to blame for _letting_ me do it. I'm going to be your
punishment for life for not having been stern and stopped me. You had
better stop me, for if I go on loving you as I have been for the last
few minutes it will make you uncomfortable."

"Blossom," he said, after he had hushed me with another broken dose
of love, as large as he thought I could stand--I could have stood
more!--"I am never going to tell you how long I have loved you, but that
day you came to me all in a flutter with Bennett's letter in your hand
it is going to take you a lifetime to settle for. You were mine--and
Bill's! How _could_ you--but women don't understand!" I felt him
shudder in my arms as I held him close.

"Don't women know, John?" I managed to ask softly in memory of a like
question he had put to me across that bread and jam with the rose
a-listening from the dark.

What brought me to consciousness was his fumbling with the lace on that
blue muslin relict of a sentiment. The lace had got caught on his sleeve
buttons.

"Please don't forget that that is his possession," I laughed under his
chin. "I'm still scared to death of him, and you haven't hid me yet!"

"Molly," he asked, this time with a heaven-laugh, "where could you be
more effectually hid from Alfred Bennett t