"Oh hush!" he said. "All that is too precious, to-day, for chaff. Jane"—he turned suddenly, and laid his hand on hers—"Jane! Do you understand that you are now—actually—my wife?"
Jane took his hand, and held it against her heart, just where she so often had pressed her own, when she feared he would hear it throbbing.
"My darling," she said, "I do not understand it. But I know—ah, thank God!—I know it to be true."
CHAPTER XXXVIII
PERPETUAL LIGHT
Moonlight on the terrace—silvery, white, serene. Garth and Jane had stepped out into the brightness; and, finding the night so warm and still, and the nightingales filling the woods and hills with soft-throated music, they moved their usual fireside chairs close to the parapet, and sat there in restful comfort, listening to the sweet sounds of the quiet night.
The solitude was so perfect; the restfulness so complete. Garth had removed the cushion seat from his chair, and placed it on the gravel; and sat at his wife's feet leaning against her knees. She stroked his hair and brow softly, as they talked; and every now and then he put up his hand, drew hers to his lips, and kissed the ring he had never seen.
Long tender silences fell between them. Now that they were at last alone, thoughts too deep, joys too sacred for words, trembled about them; and silence seemed to express more than speech. Only, Garth could not bear Jane to be for a moment out of reach of his hand. What to another would have been: "I cannot let her out of my sight," was, to him, "I cannot let her be beyond my touch." And Jane fully understood this; and let him feel her every moment within reach. And the bliss of this was hers as well as his; for sometimes it had seemed to her as if the hunger in her heart, caused by those long weeks of waiting, when her arms ached for him, and yet she dared not even touch his hand, would never be appeased.
"Sweet, sweet, sweet—thrill," sang a nightingale in the wood. And Garth whistled an exact imitation.