And she raised to him a face lit from the inmost sanctuary of love.
'You are as beautiful,' he said, 'as any woman of whom fable ever told. Your beauty frightens me. It is sometimes more than human—as though the loveliest Greek goddess suddenly found breath and colour and the light of eyes.'
Beatrice threw her head far back, laughing silently; he saw the laughter dance upon her throat.
'My love! my own!' she whispered. 'Say you love me!'
'Dearest, I love you!'
'Ah! the words make my heart flutter so! I am glad, glad that I have beauty; but for that you would never have loved me. Let me hide my face as I tell you. I used to ask myself whether I was not really fairer than other women—I thought—I hoped! But you were so indifferent. Wilfrid, how long, how long I have loved you! I was quite a young girl when I loved you first. That, I said, shall be my husband, or I will never have one. And I knew so little how to win your thought. How ashamed it makes me to think of things I said and did in those days!'
She was silent, leaning her head against his shoulder.
'Do you ever think of me as I was at Dunfield?' she asked presently, with timid utterance, hardly above her breath, risking what she had never yet dared.
'No,' he answered, 'I think of the present.'
His voice was a little hard, from the necessity of commanding it.