“Yet you were not glad to see me,” she said, tremulously.
“Ah, but I was,” he replied, in that same soft, subtle voice which, somehow, vaguely thrilled her.
“You did not speak to me.”
“Your face—your sudden appearance—startled me; I could not speak for a moment,” he said.
“Yet even now,” she said, catching her breath, “you do not embrace me.”
He dropped her hands slowly and drew back a pace.
“It would not be right—now,” he said, huskily.
“I do not understand,” she said. “Have we not always embraced each other?”
“We were children before,” he said, “but now—embraces are for—for lovers only.”
She looked at him a long moment in wondering silence, a slow, pink glow spreading gradually over her face. Then she repeated, slowly, almost falteringly: