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"You shan't die, Billikins!" she told him, passionately. "You can't die now I am here!" She stooped her face to his. He turned his lips instinctively to meet it, and suddenly it was as though a flame had kindled between them hot, ardent, compelling. His dying pulses thrilled to it, his blood ran warmer. "You have come back!" he said, with slow articulation.
"Wasn't the heat dreadful and the lightning? I ran all the way from the station. I was just terrified at it all. But I kept thinking of you, dear of you, and how and how you'd kissed me that night when I was such a little idiot as to cry. Must I really drink it, Billikins? Ah, well, just to please you anything to please you. But you must have one little sip first. Yes, darling, just one.
I loved you always always even before that monsoon night. But I came to you then because because I knew that I had been recognized, and I was afraid I was terrified till till I was safe in your arms." "Ah! But you came to me," he said. A sudden gleam of mirth shot through her woe. "My! That was a night, Billikins!" she said. And then the clouds came back upon her, overwhelming her.
"Don't do that!" she said, lightly. "Never do that, Billikins! It's most unbecoming behaviour. What's the matter?" "The matter?" he said, slowly. "The matter is that you are going to the Hills for the hot weather with the rest of the women, Puck. I can't keep you here." She made a rude face at him. "Preserve me from any cattery in the Hills!" she said. "I'm going to stay with you."
He turned back to her door, but she met him on the threshold. Her eyes burned like stars in her little pale face. "It's all right, Billikins," she said, and swallowed hard. "I heard. You've got to go to the barracks, haven't you, darling? I knew there was going to be something. Well, you must take something to eat in your pocket. You'll want it before morning. And some brandy too.
The man hesitated, holding her fast in his arms, seeing only the quivering, childish mouth and beseeching eyes. "You don't, do you?" she said. "I don't myself, Billikins. I think He's just a myth. Or anyhow if He's there at all He doesn't bother about the people who were born on the wrong side of the safety-curtain. There, darling! Kiss me once more I love your kisses I love them! And now go!
"Now, Billikins, don't you start asking silly questions. I'll tell you as much as it's good for you to know all in good time. I came mainly because I wanted to. And that's the reason why I'm going to stay. See?" She reached up an audacious finger and smoothed the faint frown from his forehead with her sunny, provocative smile. "It'll have to be a joint management," she said.
Billikins, the white fox terrier, quickly put a stop to this exuberance by endeavoring to take part in it himself, barking furiously and making ecstatic rushes between them. "The second time, dear!" exclaimed Isabella as they settled down again, cheeks flushed and eyes shining. "Only think of it! At Christmas, and now again so soon!"
Then, in a flash, it all came back her own little parlor, Billikins whining and hiding in her skirts in mysterious terror, and Felix Brand gazing at her with all the usual soft, caressing look of his brown eyes curtained behind some absorbing anxiety and fear. But in these eyes into which she was looking now there was no fear, only a longing that her answer should be what he wished.
That night he awoke to the sound of her low sobbing at his side. His heart smote him. He put forth a comforting hand. She crept into his arms. "Oh, Billikins," she whispered, "keep me with you! I'm not safe by myself." The man's soul stirred within him. Dimly he began to understand what his protection meant to her. It was her anchor, all she had to keep her from the whirlpools.
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