But it must be the right sort of love and the heart it touches must be neither common nor unclean in the broad, true sense—such a heart, say, as Herbert Arden's, and such love as he felt for Laura, then and afterwards.
"My life began on the evening when I first met you, dear," he said, as they sat by the open window on Easter Day, looking down at the flowers on the terrace behind the Palazzo Braccio.
"You cannot make me believe that you loved me at first sight!" Laura laughed happily.
"Why not?" he asked gravely. "No woman ever spoke to me as you did then, and I felt it. Is it strange? But it hurt me, too, at first, and I used to suffer during that first month."
"Let that be the first and the last pain you ever have by me," answered the young girl. "I know you suffered, though I cannot even now tell why. Can you?"
"Easily enough," said Arden, resting his chin upon his folded hands as they lay upon the white marble sill of the window, scarcely less white than they. The attitude was habitual to him when he was in that place. He could not rest his elbow on the slab as Laura could, for he was too short as he sat in his chair.
"Easily?" she asked. "Then tell me."
"Very easily. You can understand it too. When I knew that I loved you, I knew—I believed, at least, that another suffering had been found for me, as though I had not enough already. Of course, I was hopeless. How could I tell, how could any one guess that you—you of all women—with your beauty, your youth, your splendid woman's heart—could ever care for me? Oh, my darling—dear, dearest—is there no other word? If I could only tell you half!"
"If you could tell me all, you would only have told half, love," said Laura. "There is mine to tell, too—and it is not a little." She bent down to him and softly kissed the beautiful pale forehead.
The bright flush came to Arden's cheek and died away again in the happy silence that followed. But he raised his head, and his two hands took one of hers and gently covered it.