This kiss was none but such as a brother and a sister might have shared; 'twas not the passionate overthrow of modesty which covers a maiden's face with blushes, and makes a man's limbs tremble under him; 'twas simply the overflowing of a sweet, innocent affection that can find no other mode of expression. After that kiss we looked in each other's hearts with open, unwinking eyes, and hands still clasped.
"Benet," says she faintly, "how long we have been sundered!"
"Have we?" says I, leading her to a little boulder where there was room for us to sit together.
"Why, an age!" says she, with a return of her usual merry laugh. "Have you not missed me?"
"Now I come to think of it," says I, "there has been trouble in my heart; but my joy is so great to be with you again that the past seems naught but an evil dream. And 'twas no more than a dream, the worst part of it; for one while I imagined you lost beyond recovery, and another while I imagined you dead and eat up by tigers; but this is real, and no idle fancy," holding her sweet fair hand up to look at it and make sure I was not stark mad. "But, Lord," says I, dropping my voice for pity, "'tis much thinner than it was."
"Ay, I shall be a sad old witch to look at ere long," says says she; "'tis well I have no glass to look into."
"Trust me for a faithful mirror," says I, "when I tell you that you never looked so sweet as now."
Indeed, I said no more than the truth, as far as my judgment went in this matter; yet I saw that her face was not so round as of old, and her skin was rarely pale, so that her eyes looked larger, darker, and more lustrous thereby. And thinking how she must have suffered by fright, etc., to have lost flesh and blood in this sort, I was greatly moved with compassion.
"A joyful heart makes a bright face," says she; "but what would it have been like had the Indians come back without you? What would have become of me?"
"Nay," says I, "These Ingas would never have harmed you."