“Do you know you are the only person who has ever loved me?” she said. “Does that make me seem of less value?”
Maurice laughed his joyous laugh. “It only makes me seem of more; it is my métier, that—to find, to recognize, to love rare and precious things. Who that has ever known you could have loved you, pray? Who could even have recognized you? But, dearest, that is my only value, that seeing it in others.”
The gravity, the wondering sweetness of her eyes were lifting him above even the joyous mood. He paused in their walk, looking back at her with a gravity almost sad.
“Idealize me, always idealize me, and I shall perhaps grow into some real value myself—for the reality now is so thin, so weak, so unstable. Something in you almost frightens me, Felicia.” And as he spoke she saw in his eyes a strange and sudden darkness.
“Something in me!” The appeal was too near and dear. It was she, now, who put her arms about him, who kissed him, bending his forehead down to her lips, saying, “Nothing in me shall ever frighten you. You will come to me to lose your fears.”
It was then that the wonder left her; then, in that moment of sudden appeal and her response to it, that she felt her own love as more than the taking of joy, and understood that in him was some deep need of her, and in herself the power to answer it.
Later on they were able in their happiness to laugh over the ridiculous suddenness of it all. Only a week! To fall in love in one week! What could they know of one another? Felicia teasingly asked him.
“What indeed!” Maurice retorted. They knew everything was the assurance underlying these playful scepticisms. And Felicia also asked—
“You never did care for Lady Angela?”
“Never—never—never!” said Maurice. In the light of his love for Felicia, casting all past fancies into shadow, the words were sincere. Not so sincere, but that could not be helped, was his answer to the next question—