In our silence another of the fatal yellow volumes thumped the floor.
She looked into my eyes and asked,
'Have we been speaking before a witness?'
So thoroughly had she renovated me, that I accused and reproved the lurking suspicion with a soft laugh.
'Beloved! I wish we had been.'
'If it might be,' she said, divining me and musing.
'Why not?'
She stared.
'How? What do you ask?'
The look on my face alarmed her. I was breathless and colourless, with the heart of a hawk eyeing his bird—a fox, would be the truer comparison, but the bird was noble, not one that cowered. Her beauty and courage lifted me into high air, in spite of myself, and it was a huge weight of greed that fell away from me when I said,