"Pray don't reproach yourself, Maurice; I shall not mind the walk a bit. I shall have to confess my escapade to Marion, and tell her why I am late for breakfast—that is all; as it is, I can, at all events, finish what I wanted to say to you."
And then she was silent, looking away from him out of the further window. The train, gradually accelerating its pace, sped quickly on through the fog-blotted landscape. Hills, villages, church spires, all that made the country familiar, were hidden in the mist; only here and there, in the nearer hedge-rows, an occasional tree stood out bleak and black against the white veil beyond like a sentinel alone on a limitless plain. Absolute silence—only the train rushing on faster and faster through the white, wet world without.
Then, at last, it was Maurice, not Vera, that spoke.
"I blame myself bitterly for this, Vera," he said in a low, pained voice. "Had it not been for my foolish, unthinking words to you yesterday, you would not have been tempted to do this rash act of kindness. I spoke to you in a way that I had no right to speak, believing that my words would make no impression upon you beyond the fact of showing you that it was impossible for me to stay for your wedding. I never dreamt that your kindly interest in me would lead you to waste another thought upon me. I did not know how good and pitying your nature is, nor give you credit for so much generosity."
She turned round to him sharply and suddenly. "What are you saying?" she cried, with a harsh pain in her voice. "What words are you using to me? Kindness, pity, generosity!—have they any place here between you and me?"
There was a moment in which neither of them spoke, only their eyes met, and the secret that was hidden in their souls lay suddenly revealed to each of them.
In another instant Vera had sunk upon her knees before him.
"While you live," she cried, passionately, lifting her beautiful dark eyes, that were filled with a new light and a new glory, to his—"while you live I will never be another man's wife!"
And there was no other word spoken. Only a shower of close, hot kisses upon her lips, and two strong arms that drew her nearer and tighter to the beating heart against which she rested, for he was only human after all.
Oh, swift and divine moment of joy, that comes but once in a man's life, when he holds the woman he loves for the first time to his heart! Once, and once only, he tastes of heaven and forgets life itself in the short and delirious draught. What envious deity shall grudge him those moments of rapture, all too sweet, and, alas! all too short!