"You are queer, Osmond. It's queer to be so darling."
"If I were sure!" He loosed her hands and looked away from her, and his face set gravely.
"What, Osmond?"
"If I were sure it was fair to you—best for you to let you know the truth—then I'd tell you."
"Tell me what?"
He drew her hands back into his. He was looking at her with the first voluntary yielding of his whole self. It lighted his face into beauty, the chrism of the adoring spirit laid upon trembling lip and flashing eye. "I have withheld from you," he said, in quick, short utterance, "because it had to be. But if you care, too, why deny us both one hour of happiness, if we part to-morrow?"
"Deny me nothing," she was murmuring. "Let me see your heart."
"You should see my soul, if it could be. Dearest, it was so from the first minute. I was afraid of you with the terrible fear of love. Don't you see how different it is with us? You longed for love because you are the angel of it. I was afraid of it because it would have to mean hunger and pain and thirst."
"But not now! not now! We have found each other, and it means the same thing for both of us."
"We have got to part, you know, for a couple of ages or so, or even till we die. Maybe I can get into some sort of trim by that time, if I give my mind to it; but here it's no use, dear, you see."