She hid her face on his breast, and her hands trembled on his shoulders.
"Yes—yes," she breathed, almost inaudibly. Then: "Do I?"
CHAPTER XIII.
He took her face in his hands and turned it up to him, but paused as her lips nearly met his.
"Do you? Why, don't you know, dearest?" he asked tenderly.
"Yes, ah! yes, I do," she said, and the tears sprang to her eyes as their lips met. "It was because I loved you that I was so sorry when you went; that every hour and day was a misery to me, and seemed to hang like lead; it was because I loved you that I could not think of anything else, and—and all the world became black and dark, and—and—I hated to be alive. It was because—because of that, was it not?"
He answered with the lover's mute language.
"And—and you love me! It seems so wonderful!" she murmured, looking at him with her eyes, now deep as violets and dewy with her tears. "So wonderful! Why—why do you?"
He laughed—the laugh that for the first time in his life had left his lips.