"Not without you, Amy; and you said you wished you were looking at the rainbow shield with me again."
"Oh, I didn't say all that; and then I saw you needed heartening up a little."
"I did indeed. You were dancing with a terrible swell, worth, it was said, half a million, who was devouring you with his eyes."
"I'm all here, thank you, and you look as if you were doing some devouring yourself. What makes you look at me so? Is there anything on my face?"
"Yes, some color, but it's just as Nature arranged it, and you know
Nature's best work always fascinates me."
"What a gallant you are becoming! There, don't you think that is arranged well?" and she stood beneath the mistletoe looking up critically at it.
"Let me see if it is," and he advanced to her side. "This is the only test," he said, and quick as a flash he encircled her with his arm and pressed a kiss upon her lips.
She sprang aloof and looked at him with dilating eyes. He had often kissed her before, and she had thought nothing more of it than of a brother's salute. Was it a subtile, mysterious power in the mistletoe itself with which it had been endowed by ages of superstition? Was that kiss like the final ray of the Jane sun that opens the heart of the rose when at last it is ready to expand? She looked at him wonderingly, tremblingly, the color of the rose mounting higher and higher, and deepening as if the blood were coming from the depths of her heart. He did not speak. In answer to her wondering, questioning look, he only bent full upon her his dark eyes that had held hers once before in a moment of terror. She saw his secret in their depths at last, the devotion, the love, which she herself had unsuspectingly said would "last always." She took a faltering step toward him, then covered her burning face with her hands.
"Amy," he said, taking her gently in his arms, "do you understand me now? Dear, blind little girl, I have been worshipping all these months, and you have not known it."
"I—I thought you were in love with nature," she whispered.