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He sent me the news, and I have come myself to claim her and take her back." "You can't take me back!" It was Puck's voice, but not as Merryon had ever heard it before. She flashed round like a hunted creature at bay, her eyes blazing a wild defiance into the mocking eyes opposite. "You can't take me back!" she repeated, with quivering insistence. "Our marriage was no marriage!
"It's more gruesome than usual somehow," said Puck, still fast clinging to her husband's arm. "I'm not a bit frightened, darling, only sort of creepy at the back. But there's nobody here but you and me, is there?" "Nobody," said Merryon. "And will you please come and see if there are any snakes or scorpions before I begin to undress?" she said.
"Then I shan't go," she said at once, beginning to swing a restless foot. "Yes, but you will go," he said. "I wish it." "You want to get rid of me," said Puck, looking over his head with the eyes of a troubled child. Merryon was silent. He was watching her with a kind of speculative curiosity. His hands were still locked upon hers. Slowly her eyes came down to his.
"It would be a quick method of getting rid of them," remarked Merryon. She jumped up. "Very well, then. I'll go, shall I? Shall I, darling?" He reached out a hand and grasped her wrist. "No," he said, deliberately, smiling up at her. "You'll stay and do your duty unless you're tired," he added. "Are you?" She stooped to bestow a swift caress upon his forehead. "My own Billikins!" she murmured.
"You'll be quite an accomplished dancer by the time everyone comes back from the Hills," she remarked, balancing a fork on one slender brown finger. "We'll have a ball for two every night." "We!" said Merryon. She glanced at him. "I said 'we." "I know you did." The man's voice had suddenly a dogged ring; he looked across at the vivid, piquant face with the suggestion of a frown between his eyes.
"Oh, I meant after the dance," she explained. "I felt sort of wound up and excited after I got back. And I wanted to see if I could still do it. I'm glad to say I can," she ended, with another little laugh. Her dark eyes shot him a tentative glance. "Can what?" asked Merryon. "You'll be shocked if I tell you." "What was it?" he said.
Emma followed her example with a blanket, and also fled, just as Matty Merryon, who slept in an attic room above, tumbled down her wooden staircase and burst into the room by another door, uttering a wild exclamation that was choked in the bud partly by terror, partly by smoke. Attempting in vain to wrap herself in a bolster, Matty followed her mistress.
"And made a success of it?" Merryon asked. Her eyes shot swift defiance. "That's nobody's business but my own," she said. "You know what I think of life." Merryon's hand closed slowly upon hers. "There seems to be a pair of us," he said. "You can't refuse to let me help you for fellowship's sake." The red lips trembled suddenly. The dark eyes fell before his for the first time.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world that she should evade all approach to intimacy. They were comrades just comrades. Everyone in the station wanted to know Merryon's bride. People had begun by being distant, but that phase was long past. Puck Merryon had stormed the citadel within a fortnight of her arrival, no one quite knew how. Everyone knew her now.
"I am bound," she said, dully, "bound hand and foot." "You mean that you really are married to him?" Merryon spoke the words as it were through closed lips. He had a feeling as of being caught in some crushing machinery, of being slowly and inevitably ground to shapeless atoms. Puck lifted her head at length and spoke, not looking at him.
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