"That may be so," she said, sitting erect to look at him. "But, believing what you read in my eyes then and before, think you I would throw away the ring?"
"Then where is it?" he asked again, smiling at her earnestness.
For answer she raised her hands to her neck, and undoing the fastening of a gold chain, drew it, with the ring strung upon it, from where they had rested, and laid them both in his hand.
His fingers closed quickly over them as he exclaimed, "Was there ever such a true little sweetheart?"
Then lifting her into his lap, he said, "You have never yet said to me in words that you really love me. Tell me so now—say it!"
"Think you that you have need for words?" A bit of her old wilfulness was now showing in her laughing eyes.
"Nay—truly no need, after what you have done for me, and have said you would go home with me. But there's a wish to hear such words, little one, and to hear you speak my name—which, now that I think of it, I verily believe you do not even know."
She nodded smilingly, but did not answer.
"What is it?" he asked coaxingly, as he would have spoken to a child.
"Ah—I know it." And she laughed teasingly.