“I don’t want to see any other,” answered Rupert gently. “At first I thought that I dreamt, and that it was an angel, only angels don’t cry.”
“I think that angels cry always if they see down here—such a lot to cry over, Rupert Bey.”
Then she tried to control herself for a moment, and failed miserably, for she began to weep and sob outright. She threw herself upon her knees beside him and said:
“You ask me why I cry, I (sob) tell you (sob) all the truth. Because you made like that for me, and—I no can bear it, it break my heart, for my heart love you very much, you want to die for me; I—I want to live for you.”
Rupert sat up on the angarib, throwing the white veil from his head, whereon, at once forgetting herself in the danger to his new-born sight, she placed her little hand across his eyes, and held it there. The crisis had come, and he knew it; but how to deal with it, he did not know.
“Don’t do that, dear Mea,” he said, in a troubled voice. “If you think the light will harm me, tie the veil over my eyes. Then we will talk.”
She came behind him and obeyed, while Rupert felt her hot tears falling on his hair. It was an awful moment, but he sat still, holding the bedstead with his hand and uttering no tender word of the many that rushed unbidden to his lips.
“Now, Mea,” he said, “sit down; no, not on the angarib—there on the stool.”
“I sit,” she answered humbly. “Talk on.”
“Mea,” he continued, with a desperate effort, “all this won’t do. You are sorry for me, and it upsets you and makes you say things you must not. Mea, I am married.”