"Listen, and tell me what you'd call it. He said you told him at Amiens, when he asked you to marry him, that—you loved me."
"Oh!"
"Is it true?"
"Yes, I did tell him that——"
"I mean, is it true that you've loved me?"
"Mr. Beckett, after all, you are cruel! You're punishing me very hard."
"I don't wish to 'punish you hard'—or at all. Why am I 'cruel,' simply asking if it's true that you've loved me? Of course, when Mother told you of my fever, and what I'd said of this cathedral picture, she told you that I was dead in love with 'the Girl,' as I called you, and just about crazy because I'd lost her. Why shouldn't you have loved me a little bit—say, the hundredth part as much as I loved you? I'm not a monster, am I? And we both had exactly the same length of time to fall in love—whole hours on end. Cruel or not cruel, I've got to know. Was it the truth you told the O'Farrell man?"
I could not speak. I didn't try to speak. I looked up at him. It must have been some such look as the Princess gave St. George when he appeared at the last minute, to rescue her from the dragon. The tears I'd been holding back splashed over my cheeks. Jim gave a low cry of pity—or love (it sounded like love) as he saw them; and the next thing, he was kissing them away. I was in his arms so closely held that my breath was crushed out of my lungs. I wanted to sob. But how can you sob without breath? I could only let him kiss me on cheeks, and eyes, and mouth, and kiss him back again, with eager haste, lest I should wake up to find he had loved me for a fleeting instant, in a divine dream.
When he let me breathe for a second, I gasped that, of course, it couldn't be true, this wonderful thing that was happening?
"I've dreamed of you—a hundred times," I stammered. "Waking dreams—sleeping dreams. They've seemed as real—almost as real—as this."