"And I am jealous. Do you think I'll ever forgive him for having touched you, and put a ring on your finger, and set you on a horse, and promised himself to give you all the beauty he could buy? Do you think I don't want to outdo him a hundred times in those as in all other ways?"
"I did not think you were so simple," she said, smiling. "Oh, Alexander, I want to cry. I needed you. I needed someone strong to lift me up and understand those crying voices in me, and you have given me yourself! Oh, will you let me cry?"
He was smiling at her in a way she had not seen before, teasingly and with possession. "We'll have to get a place to sit comfortably in first," he said, so that they laughed together.
"Let us sit on this stone," she said. "I promise not to cry, because I've laughed instead, and the water seems to be making noises for me. Let me have your hand. Isn't it wonderful? There's no need to talk, but I want to do it. And there's nothing to explain. It's like being born and knowing all about it—coming into the world grown up. I don't like looking back into the dark."
She laid his hand against her eyes; he felt the twitching of her eyelids, and when she showed her face, he saw it puzzled, reminiscent.
"Alexander, something happened the night before I told Basil I wouldn't marry him. Were you thinking of me?"
He spoke in his queer, toneless voice. "Did I ever stop?"
She gave the laugh that no one else had heard, and clasped her hands round his. "Oh, but you are the man I wanted! I mean, thinking very specially. It was the tenth of March."
"What happened?"
"Someone woke me and drove me down the stairs into the night. Alexander, was it you?"