Othmar took them in his own with a tender gesture and touched them with his lips.
He could not doubt the great joy which his presence brought to her. Her eyes were shining through suddenly starting tears of gladness; her mouth was tremulous with smiles; her cheeks had flushed scarlet; her whole face and form were eloquent of a happiness which needed no words for its expression.
He thought of a languid, amused, disdainful voice which had said to him awhile before, 'Surely anyone's emotions can restrain themselves until one gets into the house!'
The welcome of Damaris affected him profoundly, touched him to a vivid gratitude. He was so used to the repression of his warmer feelings, so accustomed to irony and languor, and the ridicule of all ardour and enthusiasm, that this delight which his presence caused was to him at once infinitely pathetic and deliciously responsive. He was thankful to be paid in such unwonted coin, and the beautiful sincerity of it was clear and radiant as the sunrise of a summer morning.
'I should have come before if I had known——,' he said, and paused with a pang of conscience. Was it not a reason rather to compel his absence?
Damaris was not sensible of any double meaning in either his words or his silence. She was abandoned to the pure and frank rapture with which she saw the living man of whom the memory abode with her sleeping and waking. There was so much youth in her, and so perfect a candour, that no thought of concealment entered her mind for an instant. He had been everything to her; he had stood between her and sickness and misery and death; he had made life bloom again for her when it had seemed engulfed in the blackness of poverty and solitude. To her he had been truly a ministering angel. She could have wept and laughed for joy at the touch of his hand, at the sound of his voice.
Othmar was embarrassed: she was not. He was conscious of the meaning of her happiness; she was not. He let go her hands, and moved beside her under the leafless trees.
'May we go into the house?' he asked. He remembered Blanche de Laon.
'Yes,' she answered; her voice was tremulous with emotion, and had the thrill of an exquisite happiness in it.