“How the minutes fly!” he exclaimed, smoothing her hair with his hand. “It seems to me that I was but just speaking when you spoke.”
“It seems so long—” She checked herself, wondering whether an hour had passed or but a second.
Though love be swifter than the fleeting hours, doubt can outrun a lifetime in one beating of the heart.
“Then how divinely long it all may seem,” he answered. “But can we not begin to think, and to make plans for to-morrow, and the next day, and for the years before us? That will make more time for us, for with the present we shall have the future, too. No—that is foolish again. And yet it is so hard to say which I would have. Shall the moment linger because it is so sweet? Or shall it be gone quickly, because the next is to be sweeter still? Love, where is your father?”
Unorna started. The question was suggested, perhaps, by his inclination to speak of what was to be done, but it fell suddenly upon her ears, as a peal of thunder when the sky has no clouds. Must she lie now, or break the spell? One word, at least, she could yet speak with truth.
“Dead.”
“Dead!” the Wanderer repeated, thoughtfully and with a faint surprise. “Is it long ago, beloved?” he asked presently, in a subdued tone as though fearing to wake some painful memory.
“Yes,” she answered. The great doubt was taking her heart in its strong hands now and tearing it, and twisting it.
“And whose house is this in which I have found you, darling? Was it his?”
“It is mine,” Unorna said.