“I love you, and I shall be true to you always!” she says, and Lord Delaval, cynical as he is—sceptical of all things, feels that her words are genuine, and he starts and his face grows radiant.
“Zai!” he cries breathlessly.
And bending, he puts his hand under the rounded chin and lifts up the little drooping face towards him. Zai’s eyes are still downcast, but he manages to read their language pretty well, and he sees the lips part in something between a quiver and a laugh.
“Is it so—say?” he whispers passionately, throwing his arms round her and gathering her close until her face rests against his. “Zai, for God’s sake, is it so? Don’t—don’t take away my new-born hope, but tell me that you really love me and only me!”
“I love only you.”
And when she says this Zai feels that her prayers are answered, and the old love for Carlton Conway is conquered.
“Look at me, my darling child!”
She looks up, and in the soft grey eyes he reads honesty and truth, and on the impulse of the moment he stoops, and his lips cling feverishly, almost fiercely, to hers.
Zai starts away from him then, and for a second she seems scared, white, trembling.
His wild, fierce kiss has sent the blood back from her cheek to her heart, that throbs with a pain that makes her faint and sick. Then the pretty pink colour creeps slowly back, and of the passionate caress that has lingered on her mouth there is born a new feeling for her betrothed husband.