“Kiss my ring, please. I should always be regretting it, if I didn’t make you do that.” He kissed it, and the hand too, holding it against his lips a full moment, so that she felt his breath upon it.
Presently she spoke again: “Have I been good?” she said. “Are you pleased with me, Bertie? Do tell me so, if you are. I want to remember that you said so.”
“Pleased with you, my good little darling? Why, how could I fail to be? The more I see of your goodness, the more convinced I am that I was never worthy of you, and my hope is that, once freed of me, you will meet some man who will deserve you better and make you happy.”
She put her little hand over his mouth, so that the last words were stifled, as she said to him, in a voice of keen reproach:
“Bertie, how can you, how dare you think of such a thing? It is the one thing on earth I couldn’t forgive you for. I can forgive utterly and freely your getting tired of me, and wanting a cleverer, handsomer, more amusing wife. It is nothing but natural that you should, and I can see it. But, oh, my dear darling, don’t believe that I could ever love any one else! If I thought you would believe that of me, I don’t believe I could help killing myself. Promise me, Bertie; give me your word, you’ll never say such a thing as that again.”
“I promise, child; I promise,” he replied, half-awed by the intensity of her reproach. “You are a mystery to me, and I’m a mystery to myself, to have won such love.”
“You didn’t win it,” she said; “you just got it, by being what you are.”
“But no one else has ever given it to me—or ever will,” he added, with conviction.
“Ah!” she said, with a deep, indrawn breath, sitting upright on his knee, and clasping her hands tight together, “you will find that out, Bertie! I know no one will ever love you as I do.”
“I know it too,” he said, a look of despondency suddenly crossing his face.