“You know I do, but—” she began in a tremulous whisper. In a paroxysm of overwhelming excitement he interrupted her.
“Madeleine,” he cried wildly, again seizing her hands, “you don’t—it couldn’t be possible that you—that you love me?”
This time she did not withdraw her hands. Slowly she raised her eyes to his, and in them he read his answer. In a moment she was in his arms and he was crushing her to his heart.
For a breathless space she lay, a happy little smile on her lips, and then the moment passed. “Oh!” she cried, struggling to release herself, “what have I done? Let me go! I shouldn’t have—”
“Darling,” he breathed triumphantly. “I’ll never let you go as long as I live! You love me! What else matters?”
“No, no,” she cried again, her tears once more flowing. “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have allowed you. It can never be.”
He laughed savagely.
“Never be?” he repeated. “Why, dear one, it is. I’d like to know the person or thing that could stop it now!”
“It can never be,” she repeated in a voice of despair. “You don’t understand. There are obstacles.”
She argued. He scoffed first, then he pleaded. He demanded to be told the nature of the barrier, then he besought, but all to no purpose. She would say no more than that it could never be.