What happened is past telling!
With that jubilant outburst, as naive as a child's, she was my own love again, but dearer a thousand times. Would I have given her up if her hair were blanched by pain or sorrow, her cheeks furrowed, her face grown pale in illness? Need I look upon her coldly because she had become radiant, compellingly lovely? Why, she was enchanting!
And she was Helen. A miracle had been worked, but Helen's self was looking at me out of that goddess-like face as unmistakably as from an unfamiliar dress. It was seeing her in a marvellous new garb of flesh.
"Oh, I'm so happy! I'm the happiest girl on earth; I'm—am I really beautiful?"
The rich, low, brooding, wondering voice was not Helen's, but in every sentence some note or inflection was as familiar as were her tricks of manner, her impulsive gestures. Yes, she was Helen; warm-breathing, flushed with joy of her own loveliness, her perfect womanhood—the girl I adored, the loveliest thing alive!
I seized the hands she gave me; I drew her nearer.
"Helen," I cried, "you are indeed the most beautiful being God ever created, and—last June you kissed me—"
"I didn't!"
"—Or I kissed you, which is the same thing—after the Commencement reception, by the maple trees, in front of the chapter house; and——"
"And thence in an east-southeasterly direction; with all the hereditaments and appurtenances—Oh, you funny Old Preciseness!"