Again he soothed her with caresses and whispered, “But, sweetheart, you know I am not going there now,––not when I can hold you like this.” And she nestled in his arms at last in quiet happiness.
Finally she lifted her head and smiled up at him. He turned her face up to the moon’s full light and looked longingly into it.
“Nancy, do you love me?” he said.
“Oh, Steve, I’ve always loved you, I think,” she softly replied.
“And it never was Raymond?” he went on insistently, his voice taking on a resonant ring.
“Not in the least,” she returned. Then smiling demurely at him she said, “Oh, Steve, you weren’t nearly so stupid in learning your letters!”
And he punished her with kisses.
“Do you remember,” he said at last tenderly, looking over at the Greely wood, “that you asked me when a little girl to build a house for you and me over there where we might live always?”
“Yes,” she said with a touch of sweet reluctance, “I confess I have always remembered that childish speech,––with an intuitive knowledge that I shouldn’t have made it, I suppose.”