"Why, Mr. Page!" said Clover, scarcely above the breath that was failing her. "How could you think"—
"I don't know now, myself," he answered with simplicity. "I suppose I was so suffused with love of you that this one hint at reciprocation set my head aflame, and brought on an attack of emotional insanity. I ask your pardon; but all the same, Clover, I am not ashamed, and I cannot regret it. It was my good angel who held your little hand while you wrote that, for it gave me moments of such happiness as I never knew before, and perhaps never shall again."
Clover wanted to speak and could not. She thought if he would move, or take his gaze from her face, her courage might rise. She lifted her eyes, but only far enough to note that the electric fountains were flinging their jets of color aloft; the water taking new shapes each moment with bewildering grace and rapidity.
"I never thought of you before as a woman whom it would be right for a man to ask to come down beside him; I did not know that my heart was reaching out toward yours until that day of the letter. Would you mind telling me, Clover, how long you have known that I loved you?"
Clover drew a long, involuntary breath. "I did not know it," she said at last, looking up at him bravely; and when once her eyes were held in that compelling gaze, she did not wish to escape. "I only—hoped it," she finished.
The fountains fell and vanished. The dainty flame-blossoms in the remote sculptured nooks overhead still added their soft radiance to that of the moon. The lovers were alone in that colossal aisle, that pillared temple, where for one transcendent moment they stood heart to heart. It was the period of shadow in the Court. At the other end of the lagoon, far away through spaces of darkness, the gemmed dome of Administration lifted its cameos and starry crown against the heavens. From the distance of the lighted Peristyle the deep surrounding shadows gave a supernatural effect to this single lighted edifice, whose triumphant angels seemed to move in the waving illumination thrown over them from flaming torches. It was an aerial castle, with no affinity for earth; an exalting vision such as visited the prophets of old.
"Earlier in the evening," said Page, almost too deeply moved to speak, "I would willingly have turned from the Court of Honor. I could not find you, and its company of angels was incomplete. Now, heaven itself lies here. I ought to be a good man, my darling. You will help me. It is a debt I shall owe for ever more."
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NEW YEAR.
The reception at the Woman's Building proved attractive. It was late when Mildred and Jack returned home that night. All was still about the house. They parted in the usual friendly fashion, which both sought to make easy, and each felt to be constrained.