“Well, then. I have loved you from the first day I ever saw you. Can you have any doubt of this?”

She responded, laughing, with something of her former tone of voice.

“Great goose! what ails you? I knew it from the very first day!”

Saval began to tremble. He stammered out: “You knew it? Then...”

He stopped.

She asked:

“Then?”

He answered:

“Then—what did you think? What—what—what would you have answered?”

She broke into a peal of laughter. Some of the juice ran off the tips of her fingers on to the carpet.