He raised his head.
"What do you mean? Why are you saying these things? I shall always love you. Life itself is nothing to me, without you. I want you ... only you."
He put his arms round her, and tried to draw her to him. But she held back. At the expression of her face, he had a moment of acute uncertainty, and would have loosened his hold. But now it was she who knotted her hands round his neck, and gave him a long, penetrating look. He was bewildered; he did not understand what it meant; but it was something so strange that, again, he had the impulse to let her go. She bent her head, and laid her face against his; cheek rested on cheek. He took her face between his hands, and stared into her eyes, as if to tear from them what was passing in her brain. Over both, in the same breath, swept the warm, irresistible wave of self-surrender. He caught her to him, roughly and awkwardly, in a desperate embrace, which the kindly dusk veiled and redeemed.
XIII.
"Now you will not leave me, Maurice?"
"Never ... while I live."
"And you ..."
"No. Don't ask me yet. I can't tell you."
"Maurice!"