“You do the talking,” she breathed. “I do the loving!”
Without opening her eyes she met him with her perfect mouth, and gave herself to him in a kiss. He understood a spirit so passionately reticent that it denied to itself its own inward motions. The wilfulness of a solitary exalted nature melted in that kiss. All the soft curves of her face concealed and belied the woman who opened “her wild blue eyes and looked at him, passionately adoring, fierce for her own, yet doubtful of fate.
“If I let you know that I loved you all I do, you would tire of me!”
“How can you say I could ever tire of you?”
“I know it! When you are not quite sure of me, you love me best!”
Maurice laughed against her lips. “You said that was the Indian on the trail—my never being quite sure of you! Will you take an oath with me?”
“Yes.”
“This is the oath: I swear before God that I love you more than any one else on earth; more than any one else in the universe.”
She repeated: “I swear before God that I love you more than any one else on earth; more than any one else in the universe!”
Maurice held her blond head against his breast, quivering through flesh and spirit. That was the moment of life. What was conquering the dense resistance of material things, or coming off victor in bouts with men? The moment of life is when the infinite sea opens before the lover.