“I don’t want to think how it would have been if I had never known you,” he declared earnestly. “We have been good friends a long time, Lucy.”
“We’re good friends now, aren’t we?”
“Yes, but I want it to be something more than just friends.”
He pressed his arm closer about her and bent toward her.
“I hope you won’t mind my saying it; but I do love you, and have from—from the very first. I didn’t understand so well what it meant then, but now I know—I know that I love you, and love you, and love you!” The arm tightened still more. “And—and if you would only say that you love me, too, and that—”
She lifted her face to his. A dash of tears shone in the brown eyes.
“I—I have—hurt your feelings!”
“No, Justin.”
The sight of those tears, and her tremulous lips, so moved him that, with an impulsive motion, and a courage he would not have thought possible, he stooped and kissed her.
“If you would only say that you do love me,” he urged.