“Be my friend, and let me be hers again,” she answered, too deeply moved to think of any private hope or pain.
“Then the past, now that you know it all, does not change your heart to us?”
“It only makes you dearer.”
“And if I asked you to come back to the home that has been desolate since you went, would you come?”
“Gladly, David.”
“And if I dared to say I loved you?”
She only looked at him with a quick rising light and warmth over her whole face; he stretched both arms to her, and, going to him, Christie gave her answer silently.
Lovers usually ascend straight into the seventh heaven for a time: unfortunately they cannot stay long; the air is too rarefied, the light too brilliant, the fare too ethereal, and they are forced to come down to mundane things, as larks drop from heaven’s gate into their grassy nests. David was summoned from that blissful region, after a brief enjoyment of its divine delights, by Christie, who looked up from her new refuge with the abrupt question:
“What becomes of Kitty?”
He regarded her with a dazed expression for an instant, for she had been speaking the delightful language of lips and eyes that lovers use, and the old tongue sounded harsh to him.