For her! For her—this wonder is for her! It is an echo from the love of the august parents in the sweet garden of Eden.
Gone is the world, the world in which she has always moved. Gone are ideals and causes, gone are art and triumph, homage and success! Gone—vanished utterly away—while her own lover holds her hands in his.
She bent her lovely head. No longer did she look up into her lover's face with happy eyes. A deep flush suffused her face and the white column of her neck.
"So you see, dearest—best, I had to tell you. This is the moment when the love that throngs and swells over a man's heart bursts all bonds of repression and surges out in a great flood. Oh! darling! there has never been any one like you—there will never be any one like you again! My love and my lady, dare I ask you to be mine? Oh, I don't know—I can't say! I kneel before you as a man kneels before a shrine. I wonder that I have even words to speak to you, so peerless, so gracious, and so beautiful!"
His voice dropped and broke for a moment. He could say no more. Mary said no word. The firelight made flickering gleams in the great masses of dead-black hair. The wonderful face was hidden by the white hands which she had withdrawn from his.
His own strong hands were clasped upon her knees.
They shook and trembled violently.
What was she thinking? How did she receive his words?—his winged and fiery words. He knelt there in an agony of doubt.
Then, in one swift access of passion, his mood changed to one of greater power.