'What are you going to do?' she added in a strange voice.
'Why don't you get him away?'
'Away?' she murmured vaguely.
'Yes, yes; I will help you.' His left arm clasped her closely, and his breath was on her cheek.
She turned her face towards him, and there was a new hope in it, another spirit in her glorious eyes.
'You are not going to give him up.'
'I can't—I can't do it!'
'Thank God!' she murmured, and there was some thing more than relief for her father's sake in her tone. He had made a revelation that filled her with a passion of joy which for a moment drove out the fears and anxieties that had possessed her heart.
'I love you—I love you, dear,' he continued in a voice ardent, caressing; 'an' I can't bear to see you suffer.'
She let her face sink to his and kissed him on the mouth, and he clasped her to his breast and held her, repeating again and again expressions of his devotion that love made eloquent. Her pale face turned to him seemed luminous with the ecstacy of the moment. For a brief sweet minute she abandoned herself to that ecstacy and forgot everything beside.