Could it be Joyce?
And, if it were, why was she weeping?
He must satisfy himself that it was not Joyce.
Cautiously he peered round the corner of the temple, glimpsing a pretty hat with no pretty head in it. He craned forward. Upon a stone seat, encircling a round table, sat Joyce. Her face was bowed upon her hands, which lay palm-down wards on the table. Her attitude—the relaxed body, the slender, rounded shoulders, the trembling fingers, were eloquent of overpowering distress. Lionel stood staring at her, petrified by pity and surprise. What had happened to make a dear creature, normally so calm, so serenely mistress of herself, this piteous spectacle?
He whispered her name.
She raised her head swiftly. Through a mist of tears she beheld the man she loved gazing eagerly at her with the shining eyes of a lover.
For a breathless eternity of seconds the spell remained unbroken. Then Lionel sprang at her—ardent, avid, aflame to hear from her lips the silent message of her melting glance. He held her in his arms; he pressed her yielding body to his; he kissed her hair, her brow, her cheeks. She remained passive, almost swooning under this revelation of his feelings and hers. Presently she heard his voice—broken, quavering, almost inarticulate:
“Joyce darling, I l-love you. I w-want you more than all the world. And—and you love me, don’t you? Say it—say it quickly, my own sweet Joyce.”
Whirled away upon the rapid current of his emotion and her own, twin streams racing together, she whispered the words tremblingly.
He took her head between his hands, kissing away a tear, a dew-drop upon dark lashes.