He laughed again, this time in sheer joy as he lived those hours once more.
“It lasted all morning, when we weren’t making speeches telling how we loved each other, and the party, and the dear old flag; it lasted all the way over here on the train, until I got home and saw everybody but the one woman I’d done it all for.”
“But you saw me in the crowd while you were speaking from the hotel balcony, didn’t you?”
The scene in the square flashed back to him. The sea of faces turned up to his, the halting vehicles, the heads at windows, the raveling edges of the common crowd—he saw it all.
“I had never heard you make a speech before, you know,” she went on, “and I had always wished to—it was a splendid speech.”
“Yes,” he mused, and strangely for him, seemed not to have heard her praise, “yes, I saw you—I saw nothing but you. I thought of nothing but you!”
“Oh, Jerome,” she said, “I was happy and proud that minute to think——”
Suddenly he seized her, crushing her to him as if in some sudden access of fear.
“Dearest!” he said, “all this is nothing to me beside you and your love. Do you really love me so very much?”
“Oh, you know!” he heard her whisper.