"The sweetest and truest woman on God's earth," he said. "I believed in you even before I loved you—no, that is not true, for I think now I loved you that very first night when you had nothing for me but the contempt I deserved. Every day since then you have grown sweeter, dearer, more reverenced: so strong for others, so full of courage for others, so full of thought for others and without a thought for yourself: never one thought for yourself, never one and never a fear. And every day I have hungered for you; I don't know any other word for it but just hungered, hungered, hungered that a little of the dear womanly graciousness might be mine. Though that would not be enough, not that only: love must have love or go starved."
Except for a shake of the head in depreciation or denial she had heard him without interruption. Why should she interrupt what was so sweet to hear? But though it was the very comfort her heart longed for, there was no smile on her face, a fresher glow on the cheeks, perhaps, a fuller light in the eyes, but beyond these a pathetic wistful gravity rather, as if in the presence of a solemn sacrament. And surely the revelation of that which is nearest in us to the divine is a true sacrament of the spirit. But when he ended she put out a hand and touched him gently, her fingers lingering on his arm in a caress.
"And I? Oh, my dear, my more than dear, have I not hungered? I think a woman starves for love as a man never can." From his arm the hand stole up and caught him round the neck, the other joining it, and his face was drawn down to her own. "Am I shameless, beloved? No! for there is no shame in love, and Stephen, my heart, my hero, my man of men, I love you, I love you, I love you."
But presently, as she lay in his arms, her head drawn into the hollow of that which held her near, the grey eyes smiled up at him in a return to the tender mockery he knew and loved so well, nor was it less sweet for the moisture behind the lashes.
"Yesterday——"
"Hush, beloved, do not talk of yesterday," nor, for the moment, could she. But she was wilful, and being a woman, had her way.
"Yesterday you sang; will you ever sing again?"
"Yes, listen!
'Heigh-ho, love is my life,
Live I in loving, and love I to live.'
Until to-day I never knew how true that is. Ursula, my sweet, you must teach me the ending, for I have never yet found one to please me."