“I agree with Natalie, no woman could help loving you—eventually.”
“Oh, she said that, did she?”
“Yes.”
“Wal, I guess love comes easy to a woman like that.”
“And you don’t like the love that comes easy?”
He made a grimace.
“Nothin’ good ever comes easy. All the best things have to be fought for, won by long suffering and ordeal.”
They sat in silence for a time, the heart of each overburdened with intense happiness. A light breeze swept up the river, soughing through the thick woods on the nearer bank.
“It was on such a night as this, back in England, that I first told you I loved you,” he said.