"Yes." He was standing close, but he bent nearer and his voice filled and amplified the brevity of his monosyllables. "In three. I love you."
Mary Burton started back, and a low exclamation broke incoherently from her lips.
The man caught both her hands and spoke with tense eagerness.
"You say I have met you in the dark for a few minutes. True. I have looked on your face while one match burned out ... but I have dreamed of you ever since I shrined you in my heart—back there—long ago by the roadside. If you are not the woman of my visions, you can be, and I mean that you shall be. You are a woman trained in the ways of your world. If you could help it, you would not let a man take your hands in his, like this, at a first meeting—would you?"
She shook her head, but her hands lay as motionless as though their nerves were dead. She could feel the throbbing pulses of his fingers and suddenly he bent forward and pressed his lips to hers, while she stood amazed and unresisting. "Or kiss your lips—like this—would you? With women I am timid, because I have never before been a lover. I could not do what I am doing unless something stronger than myself were acting through me. It is the chemistry of souls. It is written." He let his arms fall at his sides.
Mary Burton pressed her temples with her fingers. Her knees felt weak and she stood unsteadily on her feet. The man passed a supporting arm about her waist. Finally, she drew herself up and laughed with a nervousness that bordered on the hysterical.
"I wonder," she said brokenly; and paused only to repeat again: "I wonder whether it's the great adventure I've dreamed of—or just moon-madness? Ought I to be very angry?"
"You will have time to decide," he told her. "What I have said and done I shall say and do again—often."
"It's strange," she murmured as though talking to herself. "I thought I understood men. I'm not a schoolgirl any more. Yet I'm as bewildered as though you were the first man who ever said, 'I love you.'"
"Thank God for that."