I took courage. I looked up at him as he bent over me.
"I thought you loved my mother in me—I was afraid it was not I you loved, not Marcia Farrell, but Happy Morey."
"You thought that!—And I never knew." He spoke rapidly, with a catch in his voice which sounded like a half laugh or a sob.
He straightened himself suddenly, then, as suddenly, he bent over me again, took my face between his hands and looked into my eyes, as if by looking he could engrave his words on my brain.
"I swear to you by my manhood, that I have loved and love you for yourself, for what you are. I swear to you by my past life, a life that has never known the love of a woman, that the past no longer exists for me; that it no longer existed for me from the moment I saw you coming down stairs that first night at Lamoral. I waited this time to make sure that a woman loved me as I wanted to be loved, as I must be loved—and I waited too long. You are not like your mother, except in looks. You are you—the woman I want to make my wife, the woman I look to, to make life with me. Marcia! Let the past bury its dead—what do we care for it? We are living, you and I—living—loving—"
He drew me up to him—and life in its fulness began for me....
"And now put on your hat, give me your coat, and come with me," he said a half an hour afterwards.
"Where?"
"To the City Hall to get our marriage licence."
"To-day?"