"Adèle," he whispered in conclusion, "I am cured. When I left you my brain was full of mad ideas. She showed me their folly, and now I can admire her, I can honor her, I can even love her, as a brother might, with the purest desire for her happiness, which I still earnestly hope to restore by giving her back her husband. For myself, my dream has changed. Listen, Adèle, dear. Look up at me once: my present hope is this—to strive by every means in my power to make myself worthy of the gentlest, the most womanly, the noblest—"
She read the rest in his eyes, and with a smile that irradiated her face till it was absolutely beautiful she looked up and put her finger on his lips: "Hush, dear, hush! say no more; you make me ashamed of myself, I have been so impatient and foolish. But, Arthur, I am happy now, so happy!"
She rested her head on the sofa and looked up at him, her blue eyes shining and her cheeks glowing with soft excitement; a little smile of contentment was playing about her lips, her golden hair fell back from her forehead in rippling waves; she was fairer than ever before, for nothing is so beautifying as happiness, especially to women of Adèle's type.
Her cousin felt it. He looked at her with a smile. "Do you know, Adèle," he said gently, "I never thought you beautiful before, but you are beautiful. What is it that is new to me in your face, little cousin?"
She shook her head: "I can't tell, dear, unless perhaps it may be that never in all my life have I been so very, very happy."
By which answer it will be seen that Adèle was but a novice in the ways of the world. She was not afraid, now she knew her love was returned, of letting its fullness be seen.
Let him love her little or much, that he loved her was enough. From the moment that was known she could not help letting him see she was his without reserve.
And Arthur's was not a nature to abuse such confidence "She trusts me fully. She shall never regret it," he said to himself. The consciousness of love and confidence unreservedly given is ennobling to some natures. His cousin's simple trust was a new rock of strength to the young man.
He stooped and kissed the young girl's ruddy lips, and there went from her warm, glowing life and love a thrill of something reciprocal through his being. He loved her, not with the first unreasoning love of the boy throwing his wilful soul into a dream that has come he knows not how—that is beautiful, fascinating, enthralling, he knows not why—but with a riper, better feeling, for those weeks' experience had served to form the young man's character, and it may be that for the time he was even in advance of his years.
He loved his cousin for herself, with a love founded on the sure basis of unwavering respect. He had seen her as she was, and he admired her with all his soul for her beautiful unselfishness. Besides, she loved him with a force of loving that only a few weeks before would have been utterly incomprehensible to him. Arthur's suffering had taught him something, and he was able to understand his cousin.