“All in a moment it seemed to take a deeper root in my heart—my life seemed to merge into yours—and I lived with but one thought in my mind, of the time when you should come for me, and I should never have to leave you again—-never, never, never! And every moment since my heart has longed for you, cried out for you. You were the last thought I had when I closed my eyes in sleep; and then I dreamed of you; and my first thought on awakening was of you—always of you. Is not that the kind of love which the poets tell about, and which you feel toward me?”
This is the opportunity which he has been waiting for, and he attempts to grasp it, and get the disagreeable task over. It is the golden chance he has been so eager for.
Slowly he puts his hands on both of the girl’s shoulders, and looks down into her beaming, dimpled, happy face, and in a low, trembling voice he says:
“My little wife”—it is the first time he has called her wife. He has never before addressed her by an endearing term. It has always been “Child,” or “little Jess,” before, and every fiber of the young wife’s being responds to that sweetest of names—“My little wife.”
As John Dinsmore utters these words he sinks down in the chair opposite her, but the words he is trying to speak rise in his throat and choke him.
In an instant two soft, plump arms are around his neck, a pair of soft, warm lips are kissing his death-cold cheek, and a pair of little hands are caressing him. His child-wife has flung herself into his lap, exclaiming:
“That is the first time you ever called me wife, and, oh, how sweet it sounded to my ears.”
John Dinsmore’s heart smote him. He could not utter the words which would hurl her down from heaven to the darkest of despair just then.
“Let her live in the Paradise of her own creating at least another day,” he ruminated; and then a still brighter thought occurred to him, to write to Jess, telling her all. If she wept then, or fainted, or went mad from grief, he would not be there to witness it. He was not brave enough to give her her death wound, with the cruel words that they must part, while she was clinging to him in such rapturous bliss, covering his face with kisses.
And that was the sight that met Queenie’s gaze as she returned to the drawing-room a few moments later.