"I hear it well enough. The snows are melting, and my happiness with them. Oh, if I dared—before I left you! If I had a pinch of my country's courage!"
"You do not lack for that, else you would never have seen Dartmoor."
"That was the chance of defeat. But real bravery—— There's such a madness here raging in me—such a hurricane that——"
"Oh, dearie me! Even such nonsense does Mr. Peter Norcot talk!"
"And so you answer him. Yet your eyes are gentler than your tongue. I'll speak—I care not. I'm only a sailor swept here by chance. Fate—at least Providence, I mean—to be plain, I love you! I love you so dearly that I'd—but not until I'm no longer a prisoner. After the war—could you listen then? I—oh, my heart and my life, say I may come back again after the war!"
The lightning progress of this business burnt poor Grace like fire. She gasped as he spoke. Her senses reeled. She had not strength to draw from him the hand that he had clasped and now passionately kissed. He was down upon his knees beside her, and she saw his great chest rise and fall, she felt his eyes pierce to her heart and read the truth there. Now she understood her mistake. This was love, and all the past only a ghostly phantom and mockery of it. She longed to give herself up to him. She felt that he offered her life, that his voice woke the soul that had slept until now within her. Then she blushed at the baseness of her thoughts and spoke with levity to hide the first mighty joy and the first master-sorrow that her heart had ached over.
"Come back if it pleases you, Mr. Stark. But not to me. Worthless thing that I am, another already claims my love."
He released her hand reverently, then rose.
"'Twas an insult to you not to know that without being told. I did right to say that I was mad."
"You'll never speak of this," she whispered; "your own act forced it from me. I am proud to think that you could love me; but you will keep my secret?"