“Yes, yes, dear, I do. Then you can love and trust me without a letter or a word between us until Mama is better and I can get her consent to write to you? Oh, I never knew how tenderly and desperately I love you until this shadow came over our lives! No power shall ever separate us when the final test comes, unless you shall grow weary.”
“Do not say that,” he interrupted. “I love you with a love that has brought me out of the shadows and shown me the face of God. Death shall not bring weariness. But I dread with a sickening fear the efforts they will make to plunge you into the whirl of frivolous society. I shall be a lonely beggar a thousand miles away with not one friendly face near you to plead my cause.”
“Hush!” she broke in upon him. “You are for me the one living presence. You are always near—oh so near, closer than breathing!”
The roar of the train became sonorous with the vibration of a great bridge. He started and looked at his watch.
“We are more than half way to the stop where I must leave you and return.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Over a half hour. It does not seem two minutes. Only a few minutes more face to face, and all life crowding for utterance! How can I choose what to say, when my tongue only desires to say I love you! Bend near and whisper to me again your love vow,” he cried in trembling accents.
Close to his ear she placed her lips, holding fast his hand whispering again and again, “My own dear love—unto the uttermost. In life, in death, forever!”
He bent again and pressed his lips on her hand and she felt the hot tears.
“And now, love, comes the hardest thing of all,” she sobbed, “I must return to you my ring.”