"Go on!" he said. "I can bear it better if you will let me keep your hand!" and he pressed it to his lips again "What are you going to say, Margaret? Don't be hard upon me."
"Hard!—how can I be hard?" she faltered, and the tears came thickly into her sweet eyes. "How could anybody be hard, after such—such things as you have said? But—but—oh, my lord—isn't it all a mistake? You—you cannot lov——it is impossible!"
"Just what I told myself!" he exclaimed almost triumphantly. "I said it was impossible! But a starving man won't persuade himself that he isn't hungry by telling himself that he had something to eat a week ago. Margaret, I love you—I do love you!" and he pressed her hand against his heart, which throbbed passionately under her fingers like an imprisoned bird. "You know that it is true—do you not?"
"I—I think it is true!" she faltered in all modesty, in all honesty, but with a strange look in her face; "I do not know! No one has ever spoken to me as you have spoken; no one—no one!"
"Thank God for it!" he exclaimed. "I couldn't bear to think that any other man had been before me, Margaret! And will you try—oh, my dear, be good to me!—will you try and love me——"
She turned her eyes upon him with a grave, touching appeal which rendered her face angelic in its perfect maidenly innocence and trustfulness.
"I—I will try," she murmured in so low a voice that it is wonderful that he should have heard it.
But he did hear it, and leaning forward, caught her in his arms and drew her to him until her head rested on his shoulders, her face against his.
Then, as his lips clung to hers in the first love kiss that man had ever imprinted there, she drew back, startled and trembling.
"Margaret, dearest!" he exclaimed, in tender reproach, attempting to take her in his embrace again.