But when I dragged myself giddy and faint from the boiling breakers and scrambled upon the desolate island under the rain that beat me like the lashes of a whip, pushing against a wind that bellowed and rushed as though determined to thrust me back to the waters I had cheated of their prey, my only thoughts were for succour and shelter.
Such warm shelter, such loving welcome, it was of course impossible that I could for a moment have anticipated!
Conceive, my dear diary, the feelings of a poor, semi-drowned wanderer, shivering with cold, with feet torn by cruel stones, who suddenly emerges from howl and turmoil into a warm, quiet room to be received as a long and eagerly expected guest, whose advent brings happiness, whose presence is a highly prized favour; in fact not as one who has to explain her intrusion, but as one who in the situation holds the upper hand herself.
And _this_ was my welcome from him whose absence from Pulwick was more haunting than any presence I can think of!
Of course I knew him at once. Even had I not expected to see him--had I not come to seek him in fact--I should have known him at once from the portrait whose melancholy, wide-open eyes had followed me about the gallery. But I had not dreamed to see him so little altered. Now, apart from the dress, if he is in any way changed from the picture, it is in a look of greater youth and less sombreness. The portrait is handsome, but the original is better.
Had it not been so, I imagine I might have felt vastly different when I was seized and enfolded and--kissed! As it was I cannot remember that, even at the moment of this extraordinary proceeding, I was otherwise than pleased, nor that the dark hints of Mr. Landale concerning Sir Adrian's madness returned to disturb my mind in the least.
And yet I found myself enveloped in great strong arms out of which I could not have extricated myself by the most frantic efforts--although the folding was soft and tender--and I loved that impression. Why? I cannot say.
His words of love were not addressed to me; from his exclamation I knew that the real and present Molly was not the true object of his sudden ecstasy.
And yet I am glad that this is the first man who has been able to kiss Molly de Savenaye. It is quite incomprehensible; I ought to be indignant.