"I floated on a plank a few hours, and was picked up by another life-boat, that is the whole story, simply told," he replies.
"And you did not forget me when you thought me dead—you loved me after I was gone from you?" she says, with a note of gladness in her deep, sweet voice.
"I loved you before I had lost you, darling. Did you not guess the truth, Reine?" he inquired, earnestly.
"No," she answers, with blended wonder and delight in her beautiful, glowing face.
"It is true, dear," he answers. "I loved you before I became aware of it myself. I was abominably jealous of the young lord who admired you in England. Yet at the time I was scarcely conscious of the meaning of my annoyance. My proposal to accompany you to America was an outgrowth of the longing to have you all to myself. And Reine, my darling wife, you remember that last night when the terrible trial of fire came to us, that night I had resolved that our strange alienation should exist no longer. I had determined to ask you, to pray you to come to your true resting-place upon my heart. But, my bride, my wife, there will be no more separation between us. You will share my home and my heart henceforth."
"You used not to like me," she says, filled with a glad surprise. "Why did you love me at last?"
The lover-husband looks down with a half-mischievous smile into the dark, questioning eyes.
"Why did I love you," he says, lightly, yet tenderly. "Shall I tell you, little one? Well, then, I believe it was because you loved me."
The sweet face, covered with blushes, droops from his gaze. He bends to kiss it, then continues, less teasingly:
"You remember how you used to gibe and tease and ridicule me, Reine, and how I retaliated in likewise? Well, when it came to me suddenly that you really loved me, it filled me with a certain, indefinable triumph and pride which grew and grew upon me until when you came to England the feeling blossomed into passion. Every time I looked at you I said to myself: 'She loves me, that beautiful, spirited girl loves me,' and there was such strange, thrilling sweetness in the thought that it seemed to compel my love in return. Now, Reine, my own adored one, I feel and know that my love for you is the one great passion of my life. That which I felt for Maud was a mere empty fancy, born of her lily-like beauty, and fading when I saw that her soul was not fair and angelic like her face. Henceforth, my wife, you will embody all the beauty of earth to me. You are 'queen, lily and rose' in one."