She smiled a little. "Leave it alone then," she said, half mockingly. "Go your own way and be at peace."
"Lettice! I can never be at peace now without you."
"Is not that very unreasonable of you?" she asked, speaking lightly because she felt so deeply. The joy of his presence was almost oppressive. She had longed for it so often, and it had come to her for these two short hours so unexpectedly, that it nearly overwhelmed her.
"No, dearest, it is most natural. I have nobody to love, to trust, but you. Tell me that you feel as I do, that you want to be mine—mine wholly, and then I shall fight with a better heart, and be as brave as you have always been."
"Be brave, then," she said with a shadowy smile. "Yes, Alan, if it is any help to you to know it, I shall be glad when we need never part."
"I sometimes wonder," he murmured, "whether that day will ever come!"
"Oh, yes, it will come," she answered gently. "I think that after our long days of darkness there is sunshine for us—somewhere—by and by."
And then the music began, and as the two listened to the mighty harmonies, their hands met and clasped each other under cover of the book which Lettice held, and their hearts seemed to beat in unison as the joyous choral music pealed out across the hall—
"Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligthum,
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng getheilt;
Alle Menschen werden Bruder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt."
"I feel," said Alan, as they lingered for a moment in the dimness of the gallery when the symphony was over, and the crowd was slowly filing out into Regent Street and Piccadilly, "I feel as if that hymn of joy were the prelude to some new and happier life."