With a bursting heart, Valerie almost gathered him in her arms.
"D'you love me, Anthony?"
By way of answer he just clung to her. At length—
"I'm—I'm sorry, my sweet…. It's—I think it's just because … I love you so much." With an effort he mastered his lips. "And I'm so very sorry, dear, I kissed you like that—the day I went down. I dreamed about it. I dreamed you came to me, and I apologized." With her heart in her mouth, Valerie smoothed his brow. "And you were—so very sweet. You said"—he hesitated—"you spoke so very handsomely."
"I'm so glad, darling."
"And, oh, Valerie,"—he was himself again now—"I've had such a wonderful dream. I've been waiting for you, my darling, before I spoke of it."
"What did you dream, lad?"
"I dreamed that I'd left the Bumbles—I had given notice, you know—and gone, in answer to an advertisement, to a place in the Cotswolds. It's all so real, so vivid, that it's almost impossible to appreciate that it's all a dream. I can remember every detail of the journey—I had Patch with me—down to the faces of my fellow-passengers. A woman with a baby got out at Oxford and left a parcel behind. And I ran after her with it. I can see her scared face now, poor soul, when I touched her on the shoulder…."
The story of the last four months came pelting. Anthony fairly opened his heart. At first, listening to the bare truth told with the confident naïveté of disbelief, Valerie felt as though she were cheating the blind. After a little, this sense of shabbiness was suddenly supplanted by a perfect torment of apprehension lest Anthony should detect her hypocrisy. Presently, before her breathless interest in the narrative, the girl's uneasiness slipped unremarked away, and, when the door opened and the gentle nurse appeared to part them, she was following the ingenuous recital with unaffected eagerness.
Valerie nodded her acquiescence in the unspoken order, and the nurse withdrew. As the former rose to her feet—