This was what was passing between the young people. Rose paused a moment with her crochet hook in a half-looped stitch, and the smile trembled on her sweet mouth. Paul had asked a question, expressed a thousand times before, but never with that intonation and significance.
"Rose, do you love me?"
Now the bloom of roses mounted to her forehead, and swept down the snow of her neck! Paul saw it, and blushed also—the lashes drooped over those great velvety eyes, and a strange thrill, too sweet for pain, too new for entire pleasure, ran through his whole system.
"Rose, do you love me?"
As I have said, she had answered that question a thousand times before, but now it took away her voice. She bent her head and commenced her work again, looping up the worsted with desperate haste.
"Why don't you speak, Rose?"
"I don't know what to say," she replied, trembling all over.
"Don't know what to say!" repeated Paul, sitting upright, and turning his startled eyes full upon her. "I ask if you love me, and—oh, Rose, is there a doubt?"
Rose shook her head and bent over her work.
"If I ask this now," said Paul, very earnestly, "it is because I wish to be certain that—that—oh, Rose, why can't you answer me?"