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      CHAPTER XVIII

      Wherein Freckles refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable Birth, and the Angel Goes in Quest of it

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      Freckles lay on a flat pillow, his body immovable in a plaster cast, his maimed arm, as always, hidden. His greedy gaze fastened at once on the Angel's face. She crossed to him with light step and bent over him with infinite tenderness. Her heart ached at the change in his appearance. He seemed so weak, heart hungry, so utterly hopeless, so alone. She could see that the night had been one long terror.

      For the first time she tried putting herself in Freckles' place. What would it mean to have no parents, no home, no name? No name! That was the worst of all. That was to be lost—indeed—utterly and hopelessly lost. The Angel lifted her hands to her dazed head and reeled, as she tried to face that proposition. She dropped on her knees beside the bed, slipped her arm under the pillow, and leaning over Freckles, set her lips on his forehead. He smiled faintly, but his wistful face appeared worse for it. It hurt the Angel to the heart.

      “Dear Freckles,” she said, “there is a story in your eyes this morning, tell me?”

      Freckles drew a long, wavering breath.

      “Angel,” he begged, “be generous! Be thinking of me a little. I'm so homesick and worn out, dear Angel, be giving me back me promise. Let me go?”

      “Why Freckles!” faltered the Angel. “You don't know what you are asking. 'Let you go!' I cannot! I love you better than anyone, Freckles. I think you are the very finest person I ever knew. I have our lives all planned. I want you to be educated and learn all there is to know about singing, just as soon as you are well enough. By the time you have completed your education I will have finished college, and then I want,” she choked a second, “I want you to be my real knight, Freckles, and come to me and tell me that you—like me—a little. I have been counting on you for my sweetheart from the very first, Freckles. I can't give you up, unless you don't like me. But you do like me—just a little—don't you, Freckles?”

      Freckles lay whiter than the coverlet, his staring eyes on the ceiling and his breath wheezing between dry lips. The Angel awaited his answer a second, and when none came, she dropped her crimsoning face beside him on the pillow and whispered in his ear:

      “Freckles, I—I'm trying to make love to you. Oh, can't you help me only a little bit? It's awful hard all alone! I don't know how, when I really mean it, but Freckles, I love you. I must have you, and now I guess—I guess maybe I'd better kiss you next.”

      She lifted her shamed face and bravely laid her feverish, quivering lips on his. Her breath, like clover-bloom, was in his nostrils, and her hair touched his face. Then she looked into his eyes with reproach.

      “Freckles,” she panted, “Freckles! I didn't think it was in you to be mean!”

      “Mean, Angel! Mean to you?” gasped Freckles.

      “Yes,” said the Angel. “Downright mean. When I kiss you, if you had any mercy at all you'd kiss back, just a little bit.”

      Freckles' sinewy fist knotted into the coverlet. His chin pointed ceilingward while his head rocked on the pillow.

      “Oh, Jesus!” burst from him in agony. “You ain't the only one that was crucified!”

      The Angel caught Freckles' hand and carried it to her breast.

      “Freckles!” she wailed in terror, “Freckles! It is a mistake? Is it that you don't want me?”

      Freckles' head rolled on in wordless suffering.

      “Wait a bit, Angel?” he panted at last. “Be giving me a little time!”

      The Angel arose with controlled features. She bathed his face, straightened his hair, and held water to his lips. It seemed a long time before he reached toward her. Instantly she knelt again, carried his hand to her breast, and leaned her cheek upon it.

      “Tell me, Freckles,” she whispered softly.

      “If I can,” said Freckles in agony. “It's just this. Angels are from above. Outcasts are from below. You've a sound body and you're beautifulest of all. You have everything that loving, careful raising and money can give you. I have so much less than nothing that I don't suppose I had any right to be born. It's a sure thing—nobody wanted me afterward, so of course, they didn't before. Some of them should have been telling you long ago.”

      “If that's all you have to say, Freckles, I've known that quite a while,” said the Angel stoutly. “Mr. McLean told my father, and he told me. That only makes me love you more, to pay for all you've missed.”

      “Then I'm wondering at you,” said Freckles in a voice of awe. “Can't you see that if you were willing and your father would come and offer you to me, I couldn't be touching the soles of your feet, in love—me, whose people brawled over me, cut off me hand, and throwed me away to freeze and to die! Me, who has no name just as much because I've no RIGHT to any, as because I don't know it. When I was little, I planned to find me father and mother when I grew up. Now I know me mother deserted me, and me father was maybe a thief and surely a liar. The pity for me suffering and the watching over me have gone to your head, dear Angel, and it's me must be thinking for you. If you could be forgetting me lost hand, where I was raised, and that I had no name to give you, and if you would be taking me as I am, some day people such as mine must be, might come upon you. I used to pray ivery night and morning and many times the day to see me mother. Now I only pray to die quickly and never risk the sight of her. 'Tain't no ways possible, Angel! It's a wildness of your dear head. Oh, do for mercy sake, kiss me once more and be letting me go!”

      “Not СКАЧАТЬ