He shook his head. “After all that’s happened, after all the loneliness and all the silence—— My dear, I don’t know what’s the matter with me; I think you’ve killed something. I’m not trying to be unkind.”
She crouched her face in her hands. At last she became earnest “And just when I need you!”
“Tell me,” he urged gravely; “I’ll do anything.”
“You promise—really anything?”
“Anything.”
She smiled mysteriously, making bars of her fingers before her eyes. She knew that, however he might deny it, he was again surrendering to her power. “Even if I were to ask you to marry me?”
“Anything,” he repeated, without fervor.
“Then I’ll ask a little thing first.” She hesitated. “It would help if you put your arm about me.”
He carried out her request perfunctorily.
“Ask me questions,” she whispered; “it will be easier to begin like that.”