“Alors tu m’aimes!” he cried, and something mutual swallowed her reply and the consciousness of both for one long heaven-rifting minute.
“Alors tu m’aimes?” he said again, with a great quivering breath; “tu m’aimes, n’est-ce pas?”
“With my whole heart and soul and life,” she confessed.
And then he kissed her hastily, hungrily, murmuring:
“Ma cherie! my angel, mine, mine!”
She cried a little and laughed a little, looked up a little and looked down a little, tried to draw away from him and found herself drawn yet nearer; was kissed, and kissed him; was looked upon and returned the look; felt the strength of his love and felt the strength of her own; feeling at last that the wavelets of Lucerne which had splashed softly up against the stones at Zurich, and murmured in her ears at Constance, had been swelled by the current of the Isar into a mighty resistless storm that here, this day, upon the rocky coast of the Mediterranean, had come resistlessly roaring upwards, and, sweeping away all barriers, carried her heart and her life out into its bottomless depths forevermore.
“Attends!” he said, after a minute, loosing her suddenly to the end that he might turn the key in Jack’s door; then he took her by the hand and led her to the chair where he had been sitting. It was one of those vast and luxurious fauteuils which have prevented the Old World from ever importing the rocker. He installed her in its depth and placed himself upon the broad and cushioned arm.
“Mon Dieu, que je suis heureux!” he said, smiling down into her eyes; “alors tu m’aimes vraiment?”
“Jack told me that you were terribly ill,” she said, her eyes resting upon his face with a sort of overwhelming content.
“And you have care?”