“Ah! more than possible—it is true. Listen, Aurore! From the first hour I beheld you—I might almost say before that hour, for you were in my heart before I was conscious of having seen you—from, that first hour I loved you—not with a villain’s love, such as you have this moment spurned, but with a pure and honest passion. And passion I may well call it, for it absorbs every other feeling of my soul. Morning and night, Aurore, I think but of you. You are in my dreams, and equally the companion of my waking hours. Do not fancy my love so calm, because I am now speaking so calmly about it. Circumstances render me so. I have approached you with a determined purpose—one long resolved upon—and that, perhaps, gives me this firmness in declaring my love. I have said, Aurore, that I love you. I repeat it again—with my heart and soul, I love you!”
“Love me! poor girl!”
There was something so ambiguous in the utterance of the last phrase, that I paused a moment in my reply. It seemed as though the sympathetic interjection had been meant for some third person rather than herself!
“Aurore,” I continued, after a pause, “I have told you all. I have been candid. I only ask equal candour in return. Do you love me?”
I should have put this question less calmly, but that I felt already half-assured of the answer.
We were seated on the sofa, and near each other. Before I had finished speaking, I felt her soft fingers touch mine—close upon them, and press them gently together. When the question was delivered, her head fell forward on my breast, and I heard murmuring from her lips the simple words—“I too from the first hour!”
My arms, hitherto restrained, were now twined around the yielding form, and for some moments neither uttered a word. Love’s paroxysm is best enjoyed in silence. The wild intoxicating kiss, the deep mutual glance, the pressure of hands and arms and burning lips, all these need no tongue to make them intelligible. For long moments ejaculations of delight, phrases of tender endearment, were the only words that escaped us. We were too happy to converse. Our lips paid respect to the solemnity of our hearts.
It was neither the place nor time for Love to go blind, and prudence soon recalled me to myself. There was still much to be said, and many plans to be discussed before our new-sprung happiness should be secured to us. Both were aware of the abyss that still yawned between us. Both were aware that a thorny path must be trodden before we could reach the elysium of our hopes. Notwithstanding our present bliss, the future was dark and dangerous; and the thought of this soon startled us from our short sweet dream.
Aurora had no longer any fear of my love. She did not even wrong me with suspicion. She doubted not my purpose to make her my wife. Love and gratitude stifled every doubt, and we now conversed with a mutual confidence which years of friendship could scarce have established.
But we talked with hurried words. We knew not the moment we might be interrupted. We knew not when again we might meet alone. We had need to be brief.