His voice was earnest and full of pathos, for him.
“Was it not when father dressed me as a gypsy girl and I rode my pony over to The Gaffs and sang from horse-back for your grandfather?”
He nodded: “I thought you were the prettiest thing I ever saw, and I have thought so ever since. That's when I fell in love with you.”
“I remember quite distinctly what you did,” she said. “You were a big boy and you came up behind my pony and jumped on, frightening us dreadfully.”
“Tried to kiss you, didn't I?”
She laughed: “That was ever a chronic endeavor of your youth.”
How pretty she looked. Had it been any other woman he would have reached over and taken her hand.
“Overpower her, master her, make her love you by force of arms”—his inner voice said.
He turned to the musing woman beside him and mechanically reached out his hand. Hers lay on the arm of her chair. The next instant he would have dropped his upon it and held it there. But as he made the motion her eyes looked up into his, so passion-free and holy that his own arm fell by his side.
But the little wave of passion in him only stirred him to his depths. Ere she knew it or could stop him he was telling her the story of his love for her. Poetry,—romance,—and with it the strength of saying,—fell from his lips as naturally as snow from the clouds. He went into the history of old loves—how, of all loves they are the greatest—of Jacob who served his fourteen years for Rachel, of the love of Petrarch, of Dante.