She laughed softly. “Do you think you ought to be holding a strange girl in your arms—and do you think I could possibly allow you to do it if I were not Jane Sage?” A pause, then, faintly: “Oh, Oliver—dear Oliver!”
“You—you are sure there isn’t any one else, Janie? I—I am not too late? Tell me.”
“There never has been any one else, Oliver. It has always been you.”
“I never realized it, Jane—I never even thought of it till just a little while ago—but now I know that I have always loved you. That’s why I’ve never asked any one else to—to marry me. I understand now why I couldn’t possibly have asked any one else. All these years it has been you—and I never knew. It was settled long ago—ages ago, without my knowing it, that there was but one girl I could ever ask to be my wife—only one girl that I could ever really love.” He drew in a deep, long, quivering breath.
Her arm stole up about his neck, she raised her chin.
“I began calling myself your wife, Oliver, when I was a very little girl—when we first began playing house together, and you were my husband and the dolls were our children. That was twenty years ago. I have been true to you ever since—all these years I have been a true and faithful wife.” Their lips met—their first kiss of passion, of love exalted. Then, a little later on, breathlessly: “Do you realize that this is the first time you have kissed your wife since she was ten years old?”
He kissed her again, rapturously. “It—it wasn’t like this when you were ten, Janie darling—nothing like this! Oh, my God!” he burst out. “You’ll never know how miserable I have been these last few weeks—how horribly jealous I’ve been.”
She stroked his cheek—possessively. “I haven’t been very happy myself,” she sighed. “I—I wasn’t quite sure you would ever give me the chance to say I loved you, Oliver—I wasn’t sure you would ever ask me to be your wife.”
“That reminds me,” he cried boyishly. “Will you marry me, Miss Sage?”
“Of course I will. Didn’t I say I would marry the first—What was that?”