He put his arms suddenly about her. “I find I’m in love with you,” he said, and added a moment later: “And just think that I’ve been engaged to you so long and that’s the first time I’ve kissed you.”
Christine with her head still buried on his shoulders murmured, “But it won’t be the last.”
Riatt’s expression changed. “Not absolutely the last, perhaps,” he answered with something that just wasn’t a sigh.
She looked up at him. “That piece of indifferent news of yours—” she began.
“Didn’t I describe it correctly?”
“It wasn’t news to me.”
“You mean you had already guessed that I loved you?”
“I’ve always known it.”
“Always?”
“You can’t think I would ever have let you go away at all, if I had not felt sure. And if you hadn’t loved me, I couldn’t have brought you back.”