“I think I have always loved you, Anthony—ever since that night I first saw you, when you beguiled me with your sweet words to come to this strange land. Yes, I know now it was for you I came across the sea—for you—to you.”
“Heart of my heart! For you I will go back to my boyhood’s dreams—to the old sweet creeds! I will wipe my life clean of sins, and make it worth your beauty and purity—”
Ah! It is a most wonderful and exquisite thing to be alone in the empty, silent, moonlit world with the man you love and who loves you. But our gracious dream was soon interrupted. The postmaster called out at the foot of the stairs, and we distinguished the approaching voices of Mrs Brand and some others.
“Come, love,” said Anthony to me simply and softly, and drew me down the stairway. In the kindly darkness he kissed me again in a strong, sweet, wonderful way, and for one more radiant moment I felt the almost anguished joy—half terror and half exquisite peace—that comes to a girl who, loving for the first time, finds herself in the arms of the one right man in all the world for her.
“Say you love me,” he passionately whispered, and I as passionately whispered back:
“I love you—I love you. There is no one in the world like you.”
“I believe there is a search-party out for us,” said Gerry Deshon as soon as we came from the post-office. “We’ve spied about five couples all diligently looking the other way.”
“Any excuse to get out into the moonlight,” laughed Anthony. He had his careless-eyed, impassive mask on once more.
“And it is plain that some one has already begun to prepare the banquet,” cried Mr Hunloke. “I smell a most outrageous smell of Welsh rarebit desecrating the night air.”