“Does what?”
“The thought of my first love.”
“No, dearest. Why should it?”
“‘Why should it?’ What a question. Why should it not?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. When I do, I’ll tell you.”
“Yet,” said Magnus thoughtfully, “though the idea of my having had a first love gives you no pain, you felicitated yourself and me very much upon the fact of your having had no other lover.”
“Oh, that was a very different thing. Don’t you feel that it was?”
“Yes; I feel it. But tell me now—think—why is it that the thought of my first love does not distress you?”
“Indeed, I do not know at all. I only know by the sure inspiration of my soul, and feel in every nerve of my body, that you love me; and I am so ineffably blessed.”
“My darling Elsie!” he said, joyously kissing the lids down upon her two sweet eyes. “My darling Elsie, you are not selfish or jealous for yourself at all. I only wished to probe your heart a little. You were so jealous for me that I thought perhaps you might be so for yourself. You are not, my darling Elsie; my light of life! You are the only woman I ever loved! Yet, dearest, I told you no fiction. You, yourself, were ‘the maiden to whom I spoke before of love.’ But it was soon after you returned from school. You, yourself, were the maiden whom I lost,—for a little while, during our short misunderstanding,—and whose loss nearly maddened me. Oh, come! enter the heart of hearts, and live there forever!” He clasped her closer, and they subsided into silence, or conversed only with their eyes.