In the love of all women there is a strong quality of the maternal. Mary bent over the blond head and pressed her lips to his hair. When Antony lifted his face there were tears in his eyes. He cried—
"Heaven bless you, darling! You don't know how high I will take you, how far I will carry us both. The world shall talk of us! Mary—Mary!"
She smoothed his forehead. She knew there would never be another moment in her life like this one.
He said, "I will take you to the studio, of course. I haven't told you that in June I shall have fifty thousand francs, and from then on I will be succeeding so fast that we will forget we were ever poor." He saw her faintly smile, and said sharply, "I suppose you spend fifty thousand francs now on your clothes!"
She said frankly, "And more; but that makes no difference," and ventured, "You don't seem to think, Tony, what a pleasure it would be to me to do for you." She paused at his exclamation. "Oh, of course, I understand your pride," and asked, "What shall I do with my fortune, Tony?"
"This money on which you are living," he said gravely, "that you have accepted from a man you never loved, give it all to the poor. Keep the commandment for once, and we will see what the treasures of heaven are like."
He thought she clung to him desperately, and there was an ardour in the return of her caress that made him say—
"Mary, don't answer me to-day, please; I want you to think it calmly over. Just now you have shown me what I wanted to see."
She asked, "What?"
"That you love me."