"No, no, not a word. That is enough for me. You are mine now and always and forever."
"Forever!" she breathes.
"And—and," he hurries on. "I have no right to ask you about the past—the past that did not belong to me. Besides, if I did you would have the right to ask me, and——." He stops suddenly, pale, and trembled.
She looks up at him.
"I ask nothing," she says, in a low voice. "You shall tell me all you want to tell me; just that, and no more."
"My darling, my dearest!" he says, but the trouble still rings in his voice. Shall he tell her? Now is the time. She would forgive him, love him none the less, if he told her all now. Shall he throw himself upon her great love and mercy?
For a moment Yorke's guardian angel hovers near him and whispers, "Tell her, trust her!" but he thrusts the angel aside and silences her.
"I am not worthy of you, dearest," he says; "I can tell you that much: no man is worthy of you! But the best of us couldn't love you better than I do, Leslie. Leslie! Do you know that when I heard your name it seemed to me the prettiest I had ever heard, and as if it belonged to some one I had loved for years? Have you any other name?"
She shakes her head.
"Isn't one enough?" she says, laughing, softly. "I am not big enough for more than one of two syllables. Why, see, yours is only one, or have you got more names? Tell me them? How strange; oh, how strange! I do not know rightly what you are called, and yet——."