"I ought not to have said it was the stuffy room, ought I?"
It was the sweetest, youngest laugh she had ever given. Then she looked up at the ceiling where the sun flickered a little.
"Edmund, it is better than if I had known under the mulberry tree. Tell me you forgive me all I have done wrong. I could not," she gasped a little, "have loved you then as I do now, because I had known no sorrow then."
And Edmund told her that she was forgiven. But one sin she confessed gave him, I fear, unmixed delight; she was so dreadfully afraid that she had lately been a little jealous!
Strange—very strange and unfathomable—is the heart of man. It did not even occur to him as the wildest scruple to be at all afraid that he had been lately a little, ever so little, less occupied with the thought of her. No shadow of a cloud rested on the great output of a strong man's deep affection.
CHAPTER XXXIX
"WITHOUT CONDITION OR COMPROMISE"
It was on the same evening that Mark succeeded in seeing Molly. He had failed the day before, but at the second attempt he succeeded.