"While life lasts!" she repeated, as if the words were music. "I shall have you near me always. Ah, it sounds too beautiful! too beautiful!"
"But it will be true," he said.
The clock chimed the hour. Stella started.
"So late!" she said, with a little sigh. "I must go!" and she glanced at the windows with a little shudder. "If I could but steal away without seeing them—without being seen! I feel—" she paused, and the crimson covered her face and neck—"as if they had but to glance at me to know—to know what has happened," and she trembled.
"Are you so afraid?" he said. "Really so afraid? Well, why should they know?"
She looked up eagerly.
"Oh, no, do not let them know! Why should we tell them; it—it is like letting them share in our happiness; it is our secret, is it not?"
"Let us keep it," he said, quietly, musingly. "Why should they know, indeed! Let us keep the world outside, for a while at least. You and I alone in our love, my darling."
With his arm round her they went back to the fernery, and here she drew away from him, but not until he had taken another kiss.
"It is our real 'good night,' you know," he said; "the 'good-night' we shall say presently will mean nothing. This is our 'good-night.' Happy dreams, my angel, my star!"