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Her own spectre was always rising between them, and she got some fearful joy out of that. She counted his absence by her heart-beats, but he came back so soon that she was ashamed, and was afraid that he had behaved so as to give the woman a notion that he was not suffered to stay longer.
So closely packed were their bodies that they could feel one another's breaths and heart-beats. Where last night they had thought of a multitude of things in vivid flashes, to-night nothing was vivid after the last explosion in the town and there was an end of firing. Spaces of consciousness and unconsciousness were woven together in a kind of patchwork chaos of mind.
It must be experienced to be realised, that dead silence; when lying on the ground at night the sound of one's heart-beats or the breathing of one's horse, tethered yards away, alone tells one that the sense of hearing is not lost.
'Some books are drenched sands on which a great soul's wealth lies all in heaps, like a wrecked argosy. And some are sweet and full of passion-tones, and you feel on every leaf that you are turning, as though their heart-beats were going into yours; that they were dying that you might have life.
Every time the heart contracts and crowds the blood into the aorta, the latter expands a little, and then contracts when the pressure is removed. Any unusual exercise or excitement produces stronger and quicker heart-beats, and increases the strain on the adhesion of the aorta to the weapon.
And, as she came into his outstretched arms as straight and direct as a homing pigeon, they closed about her in a convulsive grip that held her straining to him, almost crushing her in the tempest of his emotion. For a time, there was no speech, but to each of them it seemed that their tumultuous heart-beating must sound above the night music, and the telegraphy of heart-beats tells enough.
"There's sure to be a fire there, and and it's pretty comfortable." For a moment she hesitated, and his heart-beats quickened a little, hoping she would agree to the suggestion; but the next moment she shook her head. "I don't care to thank you. I will go back to the hotel." Jimmy hailed a taxi. He looked moody and despondent once more. They drove away in silence. Presently
The saner emotions which have their birth in reason she was not ignorant of; emotion arising from nothing at all disconcerted her nor could she comprehend the slight quickening of her heart-beats as she waded to the beach, while every receding film of water tugged at her limbs as though to draw her backward in the wake of her unquiet thoughts.
To beat her down with torrents of love-cries; to have her trembling, cowed, drummed out of her wits by her own heart-beats; to compel, to dominate, to tame, when her young pride and young strength were the things most beautiful in her: never, by the Cross of Christ! That, I suppose, is as near to true love as a man can get, to reverence in a girl that which holds her apart.
She was, indeed, all smiles and heart-beats and nervous anticipation. The moment the taxi had swung away from the station, it entered a quiet street, bordered with high houses on either side. Michael lost no time; he folded her in his arms and kissed her again and again, and held her to him. "This is heaven, just heaven, darling!" he said ardently.
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