"But you must know perfectly well that I'm crazy about you, Mary Virginia!" said the boy, and his voice trembled with bewilderment as well as passion. "How in heaven's name could I help being crazy about you? Why, from the beginning of things, there's never been anybody else, but just you. I never even pretended to care for anybody else. No, there's nobody but you. Not for me. You're everything and all, where I'm concerned. And—please, please look up, beautiful, and tell me the truth: look at me, Mary Virginia!"
The white-clad figure moved a hair's breadth nearer; the uplifted lovely face was very close.
"Do I really mean that to you, Laurence? All that, really and truly?" she asked, wistfully.
"Yes! And more. And more!"
"I'll be the unhappiest girl in the world: I'll be the most miserable woman alive—if you ever change your mind, Laurence," said she.
There was a quivering pause. Then:
"You care?" asked the boy, almost breathlessly. "Mary Virginia, you care?" He laid his hands upon her shoulders and bent to search the alluring face.
"Laurence!" said Mary Virginia, with a tremulous, half-tearful laugh, "Laurence, it's taken this one short winter to teach me, too. And—you were mistaken, utterly mistaken about those symptoms of mine. It wasn't tummy, Laurence. And it wasn't temper. I think—I am sure—that what I was trying so hard to squall to you in my cradle was—that I cared, Laurence."
The young man's arms closed about her, and I saw the young mouths meet. I saw more than that: I saw other figures steal out into the moonlight and stand thus entwined, and one was the ghost of what once was I. That other, lost Armand De Rancé, looked at me wistfully with his clear eyes; and I was very, very sorry for him, as one may be poignantly sorry for the innocent, beautiful dead. My hand tightened on my beads, and the feel of my cassock upon me, as a uniform, steadied and sustained me.
Those two had drawn back a little into the shadows as if the night had reached out its arms to them. Such a night belonged to such as these; they invest it, lend it meaning, give it intelligible speech. As for me, I was an old priest in an old cassock, with all his fond and foolish old heart melting in his breast. Youth alone is eternal and immortal. And as for love, it is of God.