“My sweet saint! You have heard my prayers. You are to make me happy.”
“All that I can promise as yet is to save you from supreme unhappiness. I am strong enough to do so, I think.”
“You can save me from every unhappiness if you will come to me—and you are coming, I know.”
“I hope that if you ask me three months hence I shall be able to say ‘yes’; but now—at this moment—I dare not. It is not so long to ask you to wait, seeing that I have let you have a glimpse of my heart, and told you that as you feel for me, so I feel for you.”
“Three months is an eternity! Why should it be in three months? Why not now?”
She shook her head.
“I cannot tell you. It is my little secret,” she said. “Ah, is it not enough that I have told you I love you? I shall never cease to love you.”
“Oh, this accursed place! These accursed people!” he murmured. “Why are we fated to meet only surrounded by these wretches? Why cannot we meet where I can have you in my arms, and kiss your lips that were made for kissing?”
There was something terrifying to her in that low whisper of his. He had put his head down to her until his lips were close to her ear. She felt the warmth of his face; it made her own burn. But she could not move her face away to the extent of an inch. Her feminine instinct of flight was succeeded by the equally feminine instinct of surrender. If it had been his intention—and it certainly seemed that it was—to kiss her in the presence of all the company, she would still have been incapable of avoiding such a caress.