There was a change after all—a change which the silvery radiance of the moon had veiled from him last night. Mona was taller, and—even as he was looking at her now, without clearly seeing her face—she was so much lovelier than when he had left Five Fingers that he was a little frightened. Carter was right. It had taken those two years to make her even more beautiful than Marie Antoinette. And he continued to stand where he was, thinking himself undiscovered, worshiping her in silence from the heels of her little feet to the top of her lustrous head as if a word or a movement from him would destroy the transcendent reality of it all.
Mona's cheeks grew pinker and her eyes brighter.
Then she turned upon him so suddenly and with such an unexpected knowledge of his presence filling her eyes with laughter and joy that in one swift moment Peter had her in his arms, and kissed her so wildly on eyes and lips and hair that she was compelled to hide her face against his breast to get breath.
"You are—breaking me," she protested. "You have grown so strong, Peter. And you are tumbling my hair down that I put up with so much care, because this is Sunday!"
She leaned back and shook her head so that the loosened coils of her hair flooded down about her shoulders in a radiant protest to her words.
"The two happiest days of my life have been Sundays," he said, holding her more gently.
"This is one, Peter?"
"Yes."
"And the other?" she asked, as if she had forgotten it entirely.
"Was that first day you took me to church, when I thought you were a little white angel, and sang with you, and dared to take a tress of your hair in my fingers when I thought you didn't know it."