But he did not take them in his. Instead, he seemed almost to draw away
from her, his hands slowly clenching as though the man were putting some
immense compulsion of restraint upon himself.
"I've come back, Ann," he said slowly. "I've come back."
Her outstretched hands dropped to her sides. She was trembling, but she
forced herself into speech.
"Why did you go?" she asked very low.
"I went--to see if I could live without you, to try and put you out of my
life.... And I can't do it." He spoke with a curious deliberation. "If ever
a man fought against love, I fought against it. I'd done with love--it's
the thing I've cut out of my plan of life these ten years." His mouth
twisted wryly as if even yet the memory of the past had power to stab him.
"I distrusted love. And I distrusted you." He stopped abruptly, still
conveying that impression of a man forcibly holding himself in check.
"And--and now?" Ann's voice was almost inaudible.
They had been standing very still, held motionless and apart by a strange
intensity of feeling, but unconsciously she had drawn closer to him as she
spoke. As though her instinctive little movement towards him snapped the
last link of the iron control he had been forcing on himself, he suddenly
bent forward, and, snatching her up into his arms, held her crushed against
his breast, kissing her with the overwhelming passion of a man who has been
denied through dreary months of longing.
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