"Faith! Faith!" he cried, when she neither spoke nor moved. "My darling! Are you hurt? Are you killed? Oh, my God! must there be another?"
Faith did not hear these words, uttered with all the passionate agony of a man who would hold the woman he loves to his heart, and defy for her even death.
She came to herself in the open air. She felt herself in his arms. She only heard him say, tenderly and anxiously, in something of his old tone, as her consciousness returned, and he saw it:
"My dear child!"
But she knew then all that had been a mystery to her in herself before.
She knew that she loved Roger Armstrong. That it was not a love of gratitude and reverence, only; but that her very soul was rendered up to him, involuntarily, as a woman renders herself but once. That she would rather have died there, in that flame and smoke, held in his arms—gathered to his heart—than have lived whatever life of ease and pleasantness—aye, even of use—with any other! She knew that her thought, in those terrible moments before he came, had been—not father's or mother's, only; not her young lover, Paul's; but, deepest and mostly, his!