He led her into the house and held her there at arm's length in the firelight, as though he could hardly believe it all true, and looked deep into the dark eyes and rosy face and kissed it rosier still.
And the blue and yellow and green and crimson flames danced their merriest, as these two sat hand in hand watching them, and talking softly by snatches with long sweet silences in between.
LIII
"I was so afraid there might be some other to whom you were bound," she said, as she lay there in the firelight, with her head against his arm and his right hand smoothing her hair, that wonderful hair which had been to him as the aureole of a saint and was more to him now than all the gold in all the world.
"There is no other, my dear one. Not a soul on earth has any claim on me except that of friendship.... It was inevitable that we should both have that fear. Four months ago we did not know of one another's existence——"
"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "I wonder if we had never met if you would have found someone else——"
"Never anyone to fill my heart as you do. I cannot even imagine it."
"And if I should have found someone else?"
"That is possible, but no one who could feel for you all that I do, or could want you as much as I do. You are to me the one supreme good," and the clasp of his arm told her even more than his words.
"You do not ask me if I had any ties in the old life," she began.