"But we can safely defy the whole world to weaken our love for one another, can't we, my best and dearest?"
She wrenched herself suddenly from his arms.
"Oh, I don't know!—I don't know! How can we be sure of anything?"
So saying, she flung herself down amid the cushions of the big velvet arm-chair. Geoff stood motionless for a moment, then seating himself on one of its wide arms, he leaned over, resting his hand upon the opposite side.
"Then know this henceforward, Evarne. You may with perfect confidence defy not only the world, headed by Winborough, but you may safely defy even yourself to destroy the love I have for you. You might wound me, and disappoint me, even forget me, yet while I live I shall love you, and after death also, if Heaven pleases. What more can I say than that?"
"Well, it's a very pretty sentiment, anyhow," was the lightly-spoken, almost mocking reply.
"Then truth is not always ugly," he answered quietly enough, but Evarne could see that he was not unmoved by her jeering tones. Impulsively she flung her arms around his neck, and drew his face down to hers.
"Geoffrey, I'm years and years—I'm centuries older than you in spirit. I have suffered so much in previous existences that my soul still retains its scars. Truth has always appeared to me so sad of countenance, that when I see it with a smiling face I dread deception. Yes, indeed. In my mind Truth is invariably so grim, so menacing, so destructive, that when anything appears in beautiful guise and calls itself Truth, I instinctively mistrust it."
"Then I suppose I can do nothing but wait, and let time prove my words."
A sudden impulse—a longing—seized Evarne to confess everything—there on the spot, without any preparation or delay. To take him at his word, to shatter his ideal, and see if the love he thought so invincible could really endure. What a triumphant answer to Morris—to meet him with Geoff by her side—Geoff knowing all, and unchanged by knowledge!