"Both! But yourself first. I liked you the first time we met. I loved you the second. I have never ceased to think about you. Your going away left a blank in my life. After last night I love and trust you more than ever, if that be possible. Last night my way was made clear to me."
"Now, glory be to God!" he cried, and kissed the wistful lips that looked as if they had been waiting long for just that seal to the compact. And then he sat down suddenly and covered his face with his hands, as though what was in him was not even for her eyes.
She sank down on to a footstool beside his chair, and noticed how white his hand was compared with the great, strong brown hand which had held hers that day in the Greenock church.
He was himself again in a moment—or suppose we say he came back from where he had been—and his face was full of the old radiant glow as he raised it to look at her.
"It is real, isn't it?" he asked in a light-hearted, boyish way.
"I'm real," she said, smiling back at him. "You seem not quite yourself."
"Did you ever try to imagine what it would feel like to have every single desire of your heart suddenly granted to you all in a lump?"
"I don't think I ever did. It sounds as if it might be too much for one."
"It is—almost. And you wonder if it is real and true, or only a vain imagining. Jean, is it true that you care for me?"
"No—love you, Ken,—dearly—every inch of you."