He caught her in his arms, his heart in a glory of joy.
“Oh, Alice, darling,” he cried. “What has happened to us? I love you, I love you, and you have never given me a chance to say it.”
She lay passive in his arms for one brief minute and then feebly drew back.
“Sweetheart,” he cried. “Sweetheart! For I will call you sweetheart, though we never meet again. You are mine, Alice. We cannot help ourselves.”
The girl stood as in a trance, her eyes caught and held by his face.
“Oh, the misery of things,” she said half-sobbing. “I have given my soul to another, and I knew it was not mine to give. Why, oh why, did you not speak to me sooner? I have been hungering for you and you never came.”
A sense of his folly choked him.
“And I have made you suffer, poor darling! And the whole world is out of joint for us!”
The hopeless feeling of loss, forgotten for a moment, came back to him. The girl was gone from him for ever, though a bridge of hearts should always cross the chasm of their severance.
“I am going away,” he said, “to make reparation. I have my repentance to work out, and it will be bitterer than yours, little woman. Ours must be an austere love.”