"But how? Tell me how you found out. What happened?"
"Don't, you're hurting my hand, Donald. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I can, but please don't ask so many questions all at once, and please tell me first that you are glad, that my great secret makes you happy, as it does me."
"Happy? Oh, great heavens! But you? Are you really pleased? You said that you loved him!"
"And so I did, and do ... dearly. But, you see, Donald, although I have cared for him for a long, long while, there was something about my affection that I could not explain, even to myself. It was ... was different, somehow, from what ... from what I felt it must be for the man whom I might marry. Now I know that it was the subconscious call of the blood, the love of a sister for a brother, and never anything else."
Lifted and swayed by a great happiness and reborn hope, Donald laughed aloud.
"Oh, you're a strange little girl, Smiles. I had not realized that you were fully grown up until to-night; but now I know that you are a woman,—a child no longer. My little Rose would never have tried to be so dramatic, nor would she have tried to analyze her love, and label it the call of kin, rather than that of a mate. I used to think that you were a clear crystal in which I might see reflected your very heart and soul, but now you have become a woman and therefore a mystery. Oh, woman, what do you know about love? Not the kind that Philip inspired in you; but the name which burns unquenchable—which purifies and strengthens, or consumes the one who ..." he stopped, surprised at his own rush of words,—and abashed.
The hand, which she had slipped unconsciously into his, trembled and thrilled him.
"Perhaps ... I do ... know it, Donald," came the words, barely audible.
"Smiles! It isn't possible that you ... that I ... Oh, my dear one, don't say anything to make me hope anew, after what I have endured to-night unless ..."
"Do you really care, Don? In that other way, I mean."