“No,” she replied, trembling with excitement. “Not hurt at all, only shaken and startled.”
He lifted her a little further from the edge. For a minute she lay passively, then she looked up into his eyes.
“How strong you are,” she said, “and how cleverly you caught me! Yet now that it is over you look quite haggard and white. I am really not hurt at all. It punished me well for thinking I could get on without you. You see I couldn’t!” and a lovely, tender smile dawned in her eyes.
She sat up and took off her hat, smoothing back her disordered hair. A sort of terror seized Frithiof that in another minute she would propose going on, and, urged by this fear, he spoke rapidly and impetuously.
“If only I might always serve you!” he cried. “Oh, Blanche, I love you! I love you! Will you not trust yourself to me?”
Blanche had received already several offers of marriage; they had been couched in much better terms, but they had lacked the passionate ardor of Frithiof’s manner. All in a moment she was conquered; she could not even make a feint of resistance, but just put her hand in his.
“I will always trust you,” she faltered.
Then, as she felt his strong arm round her and his kisses on her cheek, there flashed through her mind a description she had once read of—
“a strong man from the North,
Light-locked, with eyes of dangerous gray.”