“Say you love me,” he had urged, pressing the hands he held, “I want to hear you say it.”
“You know I do,” she whispered, “I don’t need to say it.”
“But I want to hear you say those very words.”
She said them, her voice just audible above the clear trickling of the falling water.
“And you’ll go on loving me, even though we don’t see each other except in these crowded places, and I hardly dare to speak to you, or touch your hand?”
“I always will. Separation, or distance, or time will make no difference. It’s—it’s—for always with me.”
She raised her eyes and they rested on his in a deep, exalted look. She was plighting her troth for life. He, too, was pale and moved, and the hands clasped round hers trembled. He cared for her with all the force that was in him. He was neither exaggerated nor untruthful in what he said. When he told a woman he loved her he meant it. There would have been no reason or pleasure to Jerry in making love unless the feeling he expressed was genuine. Now his voice was hoarse, his face tense with emotion, as he said:
“It’s for life with me, too. There’s no woman in the world for me but you, June. Whatever I’ve done in the past, in the future I’m yours, for ever, while I’m here to be anybody’s. Will you be true?”
“Till I die,” she whispered.
Their trembling hands remained locked together, and eye held eye in a trance-like steadiness that seemed to search the soul. To both, the moment had the sacredness of a betrothal.