“It is not your fault, Betty—nor mine. They force us to these secret ways.... I was glad to spend my boyhood openly by your side—I loved you, not knowing it. And they must needs break into our pleasant garden and put us apart—and set us brooding on the very glory they would keep us from. And now what was a pleasant glamour, by their starving of it, has burnt into flaming passion. I am no longer content to see you beautiful by my side; I must kiss you. I love you, Betty—the rest is nothing. We’ll leave the reasons and the excusings to the calculating gods.”
He took her hand, and pressed the fingers between his own.
And she laughed happily:
“The disreputable part of it all is that I love you for it, Noll,” she said.
He arose, and gave her his hand:
“Come, Betty, I fear you may get chilled,” he said; “you see”—he smiled—“I can even set love’s egotism aside, when yours is the gain, and deny myself the sweetest moments——”
She gave him her hand and arose; and they walked into the twilit city together.
That night, by the candle-light in his narrow lodging, Noll wrote a letter to Paris, whereby Horace was urged to bestir himself and find rooms for a youth and his bride.