He laughed, as her mood yielded under the subtle mastery of his voice, his eyes.
“Oh, but it’s a motley crew we’ve been up here, the pirates and I!” said he, leaning still closer. “‘Treasure Island’ peopled the place with adventurers—Long John Silver, and Pew and the Doctor, and all the rest. ‘Robinson Crusoe’ swept them all away, all but Man Friday; and then the savages had to come. If there’s anything at all I haven’t suffered in the way of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals and being rescued just in the nick of time up here, really I don’t know what it is. And since I’ve grown up, though of course I can’t ‘pretend’ any more, I’ve always loved this place to day-dream in, and wonder in, about the thing that every man hopes will come to him some day.”
“And what’s that, Hal?” she asked in a lower voice.
“Love!” he whispered. “Love—and you!”
“Hal, is that really true?”
“Look at me, Laura, and you’ll know!”
She could not meet his gaze. Her eyes lowered. He drew his arm about her as she drooped a little toward him.
“Listen to me!” he commanded, masterfully lying. “There’s never been anybody but you, Laura. There never will be. You’ve been in all my dreams, by night, my visions by day, up here in fairyland!”
His words were coming impetuously now. In his eyes the golden flame of desire was burning hot.
“You’re everything to me! Everything! I’ve sensed it for a long time, but only in the last month or two I’ve really understood. It all came to me in a kind of revelation, Laura, one day when I was translating a poem from the Hindustani.”