She hugged me closely for a moment.
“My dear,” I whispered, “it's nothing—without you—nothing!”
We didn't speak for some seconds. Then she slipped from my hold. “Look!” she said, smiling like winter sunshine. “I've had in all the morning papers—the pile of them, and you—resounding.”
“It's more than I dared hope.”
“Or I.”
She stood for a moment still smiling bravely, and then she was sobbing in my arms. “The bigger you are—the more you show,” she said—“the more we are parted. I know, I know—”
I held her close to me, making no answer.
Presently she became still. “Oh, well,” she said, and wiped her eyes and sat down on the little sofa by the fire; and I sat down beside her.
“I didn't know all there was in love,” she said, staring at the coals, “when we went love-making.”
I put my arm behind her and took a handful of her dear soft hair in my hand and kissed it.