“Rupert. I am glad that you are Eve. The first woman; the only woman. No other name could have fitted you so well. Eve! look in my eyes, and answer what I ask. Do you trust me, Eve? Do you believe that I am speaking the truth?”
White as a dead woman, she faced him across the shadow; the scarlet of her lips was like a stain of blood, but as she gazed her face quivered into an inexpressible tenderness, for on Rupert Dempster’s features nature had printed the hall-mark of truth, and no one had yet looked into his eyes and doubted his word. The Dream Woman accepted it so simply that she did not trouble to answer his question. “I am not worth it,” she said instead; “I am too old; too sad. It ought to have been a lovely, radiant girl who could have given you her youth.”
“I have thought of her like that,” he answered simply, “but I see now that it could not have been. I needed more. She could not have satisfied me, if she had not suffered. I should have missed the greatest joy of all, if she had not needed my comfort.”
“I wish I were beautiful!” she sighed again. “She should have been beautiful to be worthy of you. I wish I were beautiful!”
“Are you not beautiful?” he asked her. “It is strange; I had thought so much of how you would look, but when our eyes met I forgot all that. We belong; that is everything. The beginning and the end. You are Eve.”
“Ah, you are good!” she sighed. “You are good! I did not know there were such men in the world... It is true, Rupert. You must have been with me in my dreams, for there is nothing new about you, nothing strange. I know your face as I know my own, and it is rest to be with you—rest and peace. It must have been meant that we should meet to-day, for it is the first time for—oh, so long, that I have been to any public place!” She cast a quick glance at her black dress, and an involuntary shudder shook her frame. “But to-day I felt better, and it was so bright, and they persuaded me. I have dreaded meeting people, but to-day I didn’t mind. I think I wanted to come. And then I saw you, and your face was so familiar that I thought I had met you long ago and had forgotten.”
“You had not forgotten. You had never remembered anything so well. In that first moment you knew that I was different from the rest. It was written on your face, dear; there was no need for words! There is something else written there which hurts me to see. I think you have needed me, Eve!”
She drew her hand from his and pressed it to her head with a gesture more eloquent than words. Rupert’s presentiment of trouble had been true; it now remained to discover the nature of her grief.
He was conscious of steadying himself mentally and morally, before he possessed himself of the disengaged left hand, which lay on her lap. Deftly, tenderly, his fingers felt hers, moving tentatively upwards over the joints, feeling with trembling anxiety for the presence of rings, of the ring! The shock at finding the tell-tale third finger bare was almost as largely compounded of surprise as of joy, so strong had been the presentiment of a husband in the background. The eyes which he raised to hers were radiant with joy, but there was no answering gleam in the depths into which he gazed. Their sombre gloom chilled him in the midst of his ecstasy.
“Eve,” he cried softly, “smile at me! I was wrong to conjure up dead ghosts to-day when we ought to think of nothing but the happiness of meeting. Eve! I have been preparing for you all these years; now I am free to do as you will. It is for you to order, and I shall obey. We will go where you will, live where you choose—”