Her face dropped a little to hide the warm flush that rose over it as she stammered in desperate confusion:
"Before you—go—I must make a confession. Last night I—I—told an untruth when I said I had a headache and could not sing. You—you will not call me your little Una, your lady of truth any more now, will you, Eliot?"
She was so close to him, the supple, girlish figure leaned so near that he daringly slipped his arm around the small waist. A thrill of rapture ran through him as he felt her nestle shyly in his clasp.
"So it was not a headache, my little Truth?" he whispered, lovingly. "What was the reason then that made you desert us all so unkindly?"
"It was—was—a fit of ill-temper," Una exclaimed, remorsefully; then she turned round, so quickly, so lightly, he did not realize it until it was over, and slipping her arm around his neck drew his face down to hers, pressed a light, bashful kiss upon his lips, then tore herself from his clasp and fled the room.
Strong man as he was, Eliot Van Zandt reeled backward into a chair, dizzy with delicious rapture at that light, shy but ardent pressure of Una's lips upon his own.
It had come so unexpectedly, that moment of bliss after the bitterness and hopelessness of last night, it was like the dawning of a new day after a night of storm and darkness.
Hope plumed her wings again in his heart.
"She is going to learn to love me," he thought, happily, too blind still to understand the full meaning of that caress that had sent such a shock of rapturous delight through his whole being.
He sat still a few blissful moments, going gladly over her looks and words.