“Arthur—love—is it indeed you? I am not dreaming, am I?” she murmurs, clinging tightly to him, the rich voice vibrating with uncontrollable emotion. “It is you—at last—darling. And I have been waiting and watching so long—till I began to think all sorts of dreadful things must have happened,” and raising her head from his breast she looks at him, laughing and weeping at the same time in her ecstasy of joy.
“Yes; it’s myself all right,” he replies, kissing away the tears from her cheeks and eyes. “But I shall begin to think it’s some one else directly, because this is far and away too good for me—too good for me to believe in. Lilian, my life! Every day since we parted I have been looking forward to and waiting for this.”
“Ah God! I have got my darling back again safe—safe!” she murmurs almost inaudibly, but Claverton hears it, and he does not answer, he only tightens his clasp of the lithe, willowy figure which he holds in his embrace, and covers the soft dusky hair, lying against his cheek, with passionate kisses. A thousand years of ten times the peril and hardship he has gone through since they parted would be a small price to pay for such a moment as this, he thinks. They make a pleasant picture, those two, as they stand there. He—well-knit, grave, handsome, in the rough picturesqueness of his campaigning attire, his features bronzed by exposure to sun and climate, and with his normal air of quiet resolution deepened and enhanced by a sense of many dangers recently passed through; looking at her with a tender, protecting reverence. She—soft, graceful, and clinging—the sweet lips curving into a succession of radiant smiles even while her eyes are yet wet with the tears which an uncontrollable feeling of love and thankfulness has evoked.
“So you thought I was never going to put in an appearance, darling?” he says, at length.
“Ah, how I waited and longed! But I can forget it now—now that I have got you. Wait! You look so much better for the dreadful time you have been through, dearest, so strong and well. And you are not going off again, are you? The war is over now.”
“I hope so,” is his rather weary reply. “I’m tired of ruffians and camp life—utterly sick of them. Not but what the said ruffians are rather good fellows; but peace is better than fighting, when all’s said and done. By the way, how is it we have the house all to ourselves? This is an unusual run of luck, my Lilian.”
“Mrs Payne is out somewhere, and the children too. And—”
“And—why didn’t you go with them, instead of moping in here alone all the morning?”
“Arthur!”
“Lilian! Don’t look so shocked, my darling. Do you think I don’t know perfectly, that you wouldn’t lose a chance of getting the first glimpse of a certain broken-down and war-worn ragamuffin?”