And after that she surrendered at discretion. There was no more hesitation or reluctance; she accepted his love as he had offered it, freely, with whole heart and soul, crept up under his sheltering wing like a storm-beaten dove reëntering the nest, and there, cooing softly, “My knight—my own true knight and lord,” yielded herself willingly and unquestioningly to his tender caresses.
Such moments snatched from the heart of pressing anxieties are made doubly sweet by their sharp contrast with a background of trouble.
CHAPTER XVI
They sat there, these two, hand locked in hand, saying little, satisfied now to be with each other and their new-found love. The time flew by far too fast, till at last Sir Charles, with a half-laugh, suggested:
“Do you know, dearest Countess—”
She corrected him in a soft, low voice.
“My name is Sabine—Charles.”
“Sabine, darling. It is very prosaic of me, perhaps, but do you know that I am nearly starved? I came on here at once. I have had no breakfast.”
“Nor have I,” she answered, smiling. “I was thinking of it when—when you appeared like a whirlwind, and since then, events have moved so fast.”
“Are you sorry, Sabine? Would you rather go back to—to—before?” She made a pretty gesture of closing his traitor lips with her small hand.