He caught her in his arms, and drew her close against him. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but he laid his palm upon it, not forgetting, for all his strength, to touch her gently.
“Oh, my darling, my precious one,” he said, “don’t call out for protection from me, as if I were your enemy! Surely you know that I would die by torture before I would hurt you—body or soul. But something—a wicked pride, perhaps—is making you struggle against the truth; and, for your sake as well as for my own, I must make a fight for it. Look! I offer you the chance. If you can look me in the face, and say with eyes and lips together, ‘Harold, I do not love you,’ then you are as free as air. If you can do that, I will go, and never cross your path again.”
He had taken his hand from her mouth, for fear her panting breaths would cease. He could feel the violent beating of her heart against his side. An overwhelming tenderness and pity for her filled him, and his arm, relaxing its stern pressure, drew her close, with an embrace whose only constraint was that of love. Her ear was very close to him, and he spoke to her in the lowest whispers.
“Dear one,” he said, “what is it you are fighting against, if it be not the coming back of love and joy?”
He could not see her eyes. He did not wish to see them yet. This waiting was bliss, because there was hope in it.
She had ceased to struggle, and was quiet in his arms. They stood so, many seconds, their hearts throbbing against each other, their cheeks pressed. In the unspeakable sweetness of his nearness, Harold felt against his face the moisture of a tear.
“What is it?” he whispered. “You are crying! For God’s sake, tell me why!”
A gentle little head-shake answered him; but she made no motion to draw herself away, and he, enraptured, held her close.
“There is nothing—nothing that you cannot tell to me,” he said, still in that whisper that thrilled the silence of the room. “Perhaps you do not understand. Listen, and I will make it all plain. I loved you then. I love you now. I have loved you through all the pain and silence in between. Oh, dearest, never dream but that you are still my own—wholly and unchangeably as I am yours—if only you love me!”
She kept so still that he was puzzled. He made a motion to draw back his head and look at her, but she put up her hand and pressed his cheek still closer against hers. He passionately wished that she would speak; but there was no sound except that fluttered breathing, no motion but that little tremor which he felt against his side. She was weakening, weakening, weakening—he was sure of this; but he was in such an absolute terror of misunderstanding her mood that he dared not move or speak.