"I suppose so!" A sigh of yearning and regret heaved his breast, under the nestling head. "If you're going to be kind to me again, Eve, I can do anything and go anywhere."
"Good!" she said in the soft, purring tone which had made him think of her as a beautiful tigress, when their life together lay before them. "I will be kind, very kind, if only you'll prove that you really love me. You never have proved it yet."
"Haven't I? I thought I had, often—to-day, even——"
"Oh! don't let's go back to that. I can't bear to think of it. We weren't ourselves—either of us. If I was cross, forgive me, dear."
"I deserved it all," he said, pressing her against his side. "Now you're making me a man again."
"You must be a man—a strong man—if you want me to love you as I once did, and as I can love. Oh, and I can—I can love! You don't know yet how much."
"What shall I have to do?" he asked. "Do you mean anything in particular, or——"
"Yes, I mean something in particular."
"I'll do it, darling, whatever it may be. I feel the strength."
She wrapped him in her arms and clung to him, talking softly, with her lips against his hollowed cheek, so that her breath fluttered softly past it with each half-whispered word.