"Radford, what is the matter with you?" she cried. His face was as pale as death, and his eyes shone with a strange light.
"Matter with me!" he cried. "It is our wedding-day to-morrow; just think of it! I am going to be at the church early, and I am going to wait there till noon, and then you will come, and the minister will read the marriage service, and you will promise to take me for better or for worse, and you will vow to keep to me as long as we both shall live. Yes, I've been reading the marriage service. My God, the wonder of it! That's why I'm afraid. If I lost you, I should sink into a deeper hell than ever Dante saw in his wild journeyings. No 'thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice,' no bottomless pit full of fire and brimstone could be as terrible as the hell to which I should go if I lost you. That is what is the matter with me. And you promise me, don't you? Whatever may happen, you'll never marry another man?"
"No," she said, "I will never marry another man!"
"You could not, could you?" he said, almost plaintively.
"No," she replied, "I could not."
"And to you a promise is sacred, isn't it? You are not like other women, to whom a promise is no more than a garment which is out of the fashion."
"Of course a promise is sacred to me," she replied.
He looked at her with fierce, devouring eyes. He tried to read her very soul.
"Look at me," he said.
She looked at him, and their eyes met, his burning with the light of his passion, yet steady with the strength of the man behind them; hers steady too, and fervent with the love and admiration which filled her heart.