"You are not angry?" he went on, in quick, soft accents. "No! Why should you be? Why should not love come to you as to other women! Don't analyse!—don't speak! There is nothing to be said—we know all!"
Silently she clung to him, yielding more and more to the sensation of exquisite joy that poured through her whole being like sunlight—her heart beat with new and keener life,—the warm kindling blood burned her cheeks like the breath of a hot wind—and her whole soul rose to meet and greet what she in her poor credulousness welcomed as the crown and glory of existence—love! Love was hers, she thought—at last!—she knew the great secret,—the long delight that death itself could not destroy,—her ideal of romance was realised, and Amadis de Jocelyn, the brave, the true, the chivalrous, the strong, was her very own! Enchanted with the ease of his conquest, he played with her pretty hair as with a bird's wing, and held her against his heart, sensuously gratified to feel her soft breast heaving with its pent-up emotion, and to hear her murmured words of love confessed.
"How I have wished and prayed that you might love me!" she said, raising her dewy eyes to his in the darkness. "Is it good when God grants one's prayers? I am almost afraid! My Amadis! It is a dream come true!"
He was amused at her fidelity to the romance which surrounded his name.
"Dear child, I am not a 'knight of old'—don't think it!" he said. "You mustn't run away with that idea and make me a kind of sixteenth-century sentimentalist. I couldn't live up to it!"
"You are more than a knight of old," she answered, proudly—"You are a great genius!"
He was embarrassed by her simple praise.
"No," he answered—"Not even that—sweet soul as you are!—not even that! You think I am—but you do not know. You are a clever, imaginative little girl—and I love to hear you praise me—but—"
Her lips touched his shyly and sweetly.
"No 'buts!'" she said,—"I shall always stop your mouth if you put a 'but' against any work you do!"