"I'll go now," Haldicott said gently. "I'm so—immensely glad for you both."
But Allida, at this, started from her helpless apathy.
"No, no! Don't—don't go!" she cried. "I can't think. It's all so impossible. Do you mean," and her eyes now went to Ainslie while she drew her hand from his—"do you mean that you love me?"
"Love you, darling Allida? Don't you see it?"
"Because you got the letter," Allida said, as if linking in her mind a chain of evidence. "If you hadn't got it—you would not love me now."
"Forgive me, dearest, for my blindness! I should not have known you if I had not got it."
Allida still looked at him.
"You are just as dear—even dearer than I thought you; you are even more worthy of any love than I dreamed," she said. Her face had lost all apathy, all helplessness. It was with the stricken resolution that it could so strangely show that she pushed back her chair and rose, moving away from the young man, who, enchantingly a fairy prince, gazed at her with adoring eyes.
"It was written in a dream," said Allida, clasping her hands and returning his gaze. "It was written in a dream," she repeated. "It was all—all the whole year—a dream—only a dream."
The trust of his gaze was too deep for understanding to sink through it.