But if I only could have him now! You see, his life is already very full; his work is absorbing him.

It would absorb me.

I don't know anything about it technically, but it interests me.

If I could only have him now; think about him every second of the day--to keep me from myself----" She checked herself; suddenly her eyes filled, her lip quivered: "I want him now!" she said desperately.

"He could save me; I know it! I want him now--his love, his arms to keep me safe at night! I want him to love me--_love_ me! Oh, Kathleen! if I could only have him!" A delicate colour tinted Kathleen's face; her ears shrank from the girl's low-voiced cry, with its glimmer of a passion scarcely understood.
Long, long, the memory of his embrace had tormented her--the feeling of happy safety she had in his arms--the contact that thrilled almost past endurance, yet filled her with a glorious and splendid strength--that set wild pulses beating, wild blood leaping in her veins--that aroused her very soul to meet his lips and heed his words and be what his behest would have her.
And the memory of it now possessed her so that she stood straight and slim and tall, trembling in the forest path, and her dark eyes looked into Kathleen's with a strange, fiery glimmer of pride: "I need him, but I love him too well to take him.