"It is beautiful—beautiful!" she said. "Its only fault is that it is too good, too costly. The merest trifle would have served to tell me that you had not—forgotten me! And, indeed, I did not need anything."
"You trusted me so completely, dearest?" he said.
"Yes," she said simply, with a faint wonder in her voice at the earnestness in his.
"You trusted me," he said, as earnestly as before. "And how if I were to ask you to trust me still, to trust me in a greater degree, Leslie?"
She looked at him, still smiling.
"What is it?" she asked; and the question was a good reply to his.
"It is just this," he said, taking her hand in both his and holding it tightly. "See, dearest, I hesitate to tell you—it is so much to ask you! And the worst of it is that I cannot give you the reason——."
Her face paled, but she looked at him bravely.
"Are—are you going to leave me again? If you must go——."
The love in her voice, in her eyes, made his heart actually ache.