“Mamie,” he said, in the best voice he could find, “do you love me?”
“Better than anything in the world,” answered the young girl. Her lips grew slowly white and there was a startled look in her fearless grey eyes.
“You saved my life. Will you take it—and keep it?”
He looked to her for an answer. A supreme joy came into her face, then shivered like a broken mirror under a blow, and gave way to an agonised fear.
“Oh, do not laugh at me!” she cried, in broken and beseeching tones.
“Laugh at you, dear? God forbid! I am asking you to be my wife.”
“Oh no! It is not true—you do not love me—it never can be true!” But as she spoke, the day of happiness dawned again in her eyes—as a summer sun rising through a sweet shower of raindrops—and broke and flooded all her face with gladness.
“I love you, and it is quite true,” he answered.
The girl had for months concealed the great passion of her life as well as she could; she had borne, with all the patience she could command, the daily bitter disappointment of finding him always the same towards her; she had suffered much and had hidden her sufferings bravely, but the sudden happiness was more than she could control. As he held her in his arms, he felt her weight suddenly as though she had fallen, and he saw her eyelids droop and her long straight lips part slowly over her gleaming teeth. She was not beautiful, and he knew it as he looked at her white unconscious face. But she loved him as he had never been loved before, and in that moment he loved her also. Supporting her with one arm, he held up her head with his other hand and kissed her again and again, with a passion he had never felt. Very slowly the colour returned to her lips, and then her eyes opened. There was no surprise in them, for she was hardly conscious that she had fainted.
“Have I been long so?” she asked faintly as the look of life and joy came back.