“Dare I hold you in my arms, Valentine?” He was shaking as he said it.
From where she lay she gave him one look, and held out her hands the second time.
“O my wife, my saint!” said Gaston de Trélan, choking. He stooped and gathered her once more to his breast.
And, after all, so unbelievable was it, that the long embrace did seem to belong to another world than this—a far world, but the only real. . . .
That passed. The heather became heather again, the air the air of earth. Somehow he was helping the living Valentine whom he held to her feet, and was leading her towards the nearest menhir—that indeed against which he had himself been leaning. Directly he saw that she could stand alone, and could take some support, if she wished it, from the great granite finger, he threw himself on his knees before her.
“Valentine, this is where I should be!” he broke out uncontrollably, “here, at your feet, not holding you in my arms. I am not worthy of that, Valentine—Valentine, how can I even ask for forgiveness? But I do ask for it—I do ask! For seven years I have sought it, and I have sometimes felt that you . . . where I thought you had gone, had given it to me.” His voice broke, and, stooping that proud head of his, he did literally kiss her feet.
“Gaston, if you love me!” she cried out, trying to stay him. “No, no . . . and what talk is this of forgiveness? O my darling, I was wrong too—stubborn and proud. I should have gone with you—and afterwards . . . you never got my letters, I know it, but I should have written again, made more efforts. O Gaston, if you love me, don’t do that!”
He lifted his head. “Letters!” he said in a dazed way. “You wrote . . . you had no answer? I never had them!—Valentine,” and there was anguish in his voice, “you did not think I received them . . . and left them unanswered!”
“No, no!” she said. “No, my heart! We will talk of that presently; there is so much to say. Only now, Gaston—I cannot bear to see you kneel to me, my husband.”
“But there is more than that,” he said, not without difficulty. “More than my having left you to face . . . horrors. The years before——”