At last the woman gave herself up to him in complete and entire abandonment without fear and without reproach; and at last the man took what was his own without the shadow of a reservation. She shrank from no pressure of his arms, she turned her face away from no touch of his lips. They two had proved their right to surrender by their ability to conquer.
Speech was hardly necessary between them and it was not for a long time that coherent words came. Little murmurs of endearment, little passionate whispers of a beloved name—these were enough then.
When he could find strength to deny himself a little and to hold her at arm's length and look at her, he found her paler, thinner and more delicate than when he had seen her in the mountains. She had on some witching creation of pale blue and silver, he didn't know what it was, he didn't care, it made her only more like an angel to him than ever. She found him, too, greatly changed and highly approved the alterations in his appearance.
"Why, Will," she said at last, "I never realized what a handsome man you were."
He laughed at her.
"I always knew you were the most beautiful woman on earth."
"Oh, yes, doubtless when I was the only one."
"And if there were millions you would still be the only one. But it isn't for your beauty alone that I love you. You knew all the time that my fight against loving you was based upon a misinterpretation, a mistake; you didn't tell me because you were thoughtful of a poor dead woman."
"Should I have told you?"
"No. I have thought it all out: I was loyal through a mistake but you wouldn't betray a dead sister, you would save her reputation in the mind of the one being that remembered her, at the expense of your own happiness. And if there were nothing else I could love you for that."