"One shouldn't joke about love," she said.
"Have you discovered that too?"
She gazed at him strangely, without answering. In the wan light his face looked pale. Her unresisting fingers still lay in his; he felt their touch like a breath of fire through all his veins. Her eyes sparkled back the eery witch-glow of the candle-flames. "You are a green-golden gnome-girl!" he said unsteadily. "And I am under a spell."
"Yes, yes," she said. "I am Rumptydudget's daughter! I have only to wave my candlestick—so!—to turn you into a stalagmite!"
She suited the action to the word—and dropped her candle, which was instantly extinguished on the damp floor. Bending forward to retrieve it, Daunt slipped. The arm he instinctively threw out to save himself struck the wall and his own candle flew from its socket. As he regained his footing, confused by the blank, enfolding darkness, he stumbled against Barbara, and his face brushed hers. In another instant the touch had thrilled into a kiss.
A moment she lay in his arms, passive, panting, her unkissed mouth stinging with the burn of his lips. The world was a dense blackness, shot with fire and full of pealing bells, and the beating of her heart was a great wave of sound that throbbed like the iron-shod fury of the seas.
"I love you, Barbara!" he said simply. "I love you!"
The stammering utterance pierced the swift, confused sweetness of that first kiss like a lance of desperate gladness. Through the tumbling passion of the words he poured into her heart, she could feel his hands touching her face, her throat, her loosened hair.
"Barbara! Listen, dear! I must say it! It's stronger than I am—no, don't push me away! Love me! You must love me!
With her arms on his breast, she had made a movement to release herself. "We are mad, I think!" she breathed.