"I did sing. But you mustn't think that was what I wanted. I never wanted anything but love."
"Go on." To him, who, in his solitude, had never expected to find close companionship, it was inconceivable that they should be there speaking the unconsidered truth. She, too, who, in the world, had tasted the likeness of happy intercourse, only to despair of it, had found a goal. Here now was the real to which all the old promises had been leading.
"You must understand me," she said, in a low voice. "I'm going to tell you the plain truth. How awful if you didn't understand!"
"I shall understand. Go on."
"I don't know how it is with other girls, but always I dreamed of love, always after my first childhood. I thought of kings and queens, knights and ladies. They walked in pairs and loved each other."
"What did you mean by love?"
"Each would die for the other. That was my understanding of it. I knew the time would come some day when a beautiful young man would say to me, 'I would die for you,' and I should say to him, 'And I would die for you.' It was a kind of dream. Maybe it would not have been, except that I was never much of a child when I was a child. I had ecstatic times with my father, but I was lonesome. The lover was to change that, when he came."
"When did he come?"
"He came several times, but either he was too rough and he frightened me, or too common and he repelled me, or—"
"And Tom Fulton came!"