Chapter IV: Part 4

"I want to know when you married, and if you are happy--and why you ran away like that, and if you loved Walter Markham. Pam--I'll be content if you'll only answer me one thing, is he good to you? Have you married the right man? Pam, I've got to know."

I knew then how much it hurt; my throat felt like a funny little unoiled, unused machine when I spoke.

"Tell me if you are happily married?"

"I?"

"Yes."

"I'm not married at all."

"Grace," I said, "Grace said----"

"She's married. She married Clay Rendle. She was always in love with him."

"She was in love with you."

"Never! I was in her confidence, that was all. Clay Rendle's wife was a homicidal maniac. She died a week after mother. But, Pam--I'll go away, I'll go straight back to the Savoy now, if you'll just answer 'Yes' or 'No.' Pam, are you happily married?"

"No," I said.

He looked down at me, he was very white there was a queer look on his face, as if his feelings were bunched up inside him and he was sitting hard on the lid.

I wanted the lid up.

"I'm not married," I said.

The lid flew up.

I did not know a kiss _could_ feel like that. The Embankment sort of slid away from under it and us. I think it lasted for hours.

We looked at each other blankly.

"Pam," he said shakily, queerly, "you kissed me--did you know you kissed me?"

I nodded. I felt as if half of me stood there and the other half was slowly unwrapping itself from the kiss.

"You kissed me as if--as if----"

"I know," I said.

"I didn't think that any woman in the world could kiss like that," he said. "My God! I didn't think it! Pam, are we both crazy?"

"Yes," I said.

His eyes began to flicker and twinkle, those curious hazel eyes, not brown, not yellow, and not readable.

"I want things explained," he said, "and yet I don't want them explained. You are sure you aren't married?"

"Quite," I said.

"Then, Pam, will you marry me? Oh, Pam!--listen to it--you funny, exquisite little person! Listen to it!--doesn't it sound gorgeous!--Heaven!--_you_ married to _me_! Did you ever like anything in the world as much as the sound of that, my sweet?"

"No," I whispered.

He put his face down to mine. I was trembling and crying; his face was wet.

"I love you so!" he whispered. "I love you so's I could eat you, and yet I'm scared to touch you--that's _how_ I love you, you exquisite baby thing!" He laughed and kissed my hands. "I'm plum crazy with happiness," he confessed. "You'll have to be sane for the two of us. What shall we do, sweetheart, what shall we do?"

"Walk on--and I'll explain things."

"And every time we come to a shadow I'll kiss you."

"Only big ones, then. Which way shall we go?"

"Towards the Houses of Parliament."

"Why?"

"I see a shadow," he said.

I have always been scared of shadows, but if all the murderers and thieves in the world nestled in the shadows that night, I did not know. I did not care.

_I did not see_.

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