"Absurd child! But I'm a bit of an ass that way myself. I was jealous of Thomas the Rhymer this evening."
"That brat!"
She laughed low, the sweet laugh that was like no one else's. It was past midnight and the streets were comparatively quiet and dark, but at that moment they were whirled into a glare of strong light. They looked in each other's eyes in silence, his hand tightening its hold upon hers. Then again they plunged into wavering dimness, and he resumed, gravely and calmly as before, but bending nearer her.
"If I weren't anxious to tell you the exact truth, to avoid exaggeration, I should say I fell in love with you the first time I met you. It seems to me now as though it had been so. And the second time—you remember it was one very hot day last July, when we both lunched with Meres—I hadn't the least doubt that if I had been free and you also, I should have left no stone unturned to get you for my wife."
Every word was sweet to her, yet she answered sombrely:
"But we are not free."
He, disregarding the answer, went on:
"You love me, as I love you?"
"As you love me, dearest; and from the first."
A minute's silence, while the hands held each other fast. Then low, triumphantly, he exclaimed: "Well?"