"I do."
He continued, in impassioned tones: "Are not the conditions fulfilled, sweetheart? My love for you then was as a dream, a myth, compared with that I bring you to-day, and looking in your eyes I need no words to tell me that your love has broadened and deepened with the years. Kathie, is not this 'the time appointed'?"
"It must be," she replied; "there could be none other like this!"
Holding her head against his breast and raising her face to his, he said, "You gave me your heart that day, Kathie, to hold in trust. I have been faithful to that trust through all these years; do you give it me now for my very own?"
"Yes," she answered, slowly, with sweet solemnity; "to have and to hold, forever!"
He sealed the promise with a long, rapturous kiss; but what followed, the broken, disjointed phrases, the mutual pledges, the tokens of love given and received, are all among the secrets which the mountains never told.
As they retraced their steps towards the hotel, Darrell said, "We have waited long, sweetheart."
"Yes, but the waiting has brought us good of itself," she answered. "Think of all you have accomplished,—I know better than you think, for your father has kept me posted,—and better yet, what these years have fitted you for accomplishing in the future! To me, that was the best part of your work in your story. It was strong and cleverly told, but what pleased me most was the evidence that it was but the beginning, the promise of something better yet to come."
"If only I could persuade all critics to see it through your eyes!" Darrell replied, with a smile.