“I remember,” she answered. “Am I likely to forget? It was that you would never see me nor come into this house while my father lived. Well, he died a month ago.” Then a doubt struck her, and she added swiftly: “Didn’t you want to come here?”
“Want, Isobel! What else have I wanted for ten years? But I didn’t know; my coming here was just an accident.”
“Are there such things as accidents?” she queried. “Was it an accident when twenty years ago I found you sleeping in the schoolroom at the Abbey and kissed you on the forehead, or when I found you sleeping a few minutes ago twenty whole years later—?” and she paused.
“And kissed me—not upon the forehead,” said Godfrey reflective, adding, “I never knew about that first kiss. Thank you for it.”
“Not upon the forehead,” she repeated after him, colouring a little. “You see I have faith and take a great deal for granted. If I should be mistaken——”
“Oh! don’t trouble about that,” he broke in, “because you know it couldn’t be. Ten years, or ten thousand, and it would make no difference.”
“I wonder,” she mused, “oh! how I wonder. Do you think it possible that we shall be living ten thousand years hence?”
“Quite,” he answered with cheerful assurance, “much more possible than that I should be living to-day. What’s ten thousand years? It’s quite a hundred thousand since I saw you.”
“Don’t laugh at me,” she exclaimed.
“Why not, dear, when there’s nothing in the whole world at which I wouldn’t laugh at just now? although I would rather look at you. Also I wasn’t laughing, I was loving, and when one is loving very much, the truth comes out.”