"If you do not hold me cheap, you mean?"
She bent down quite close beside him. "I hold you," she said, and then whispered, "dear."
"Me?"
She laughed aloud.
He was astonished beyond measure. He stipulated, lest there might be some misconception, "You will marry me?"
She was laughing, inundated by the sense of bountiful power, of possession and success. He looked quite a nice little man to have. "Yes," she laughed. "What else could I mean?" and, "Yes."
He felt as a praying hermit might have felt, snatched from the midst of his quiet devotions, his modest sackcloth and ashes, and hurled neck and crop over the glittering gates of Paradise, smack among the iridescent wings, the bright-eyed Cherubim. He felt like some lowly and righteous man dynamited into Bliss....
His hand tightened upon the rope that steadies one upon the stairs of stone. He was for kissing her hand and did not.
He said not a word more. He turned about, and with something very like a scared expression on his face led the way into the obscurity of their descent.
§3