“That I am bad?” he asked bitterly. “Yes--it is true--it would be a poor joke, such an assertion, just now, though perhaps it is a poorer truth. It is also true that I would have kept it from you--if you had not greatly moved me.”
“No--I didn’t mean that,” she said gently. “I meant the other thing you said.”
He turned quickly. “That I love you?” he asked.
Rose nodded. “Because,” she whispered, “I--I would take the risk--if you loved me.”
He took her hand and kissed it, and then with a fierce gentleness that seemed impatient of its own restraint, he drew her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers. “You child! You child!” he murmured. “God punish me--if I ever fail you--” But even with his lips against her lips--he envisaged his own failure.
She drew away from him. “Léon,” she said, “I want you to let me go home alone--”
He looked at her in surprise--a moment before she had seemed so helpless, so incapable of asserting her surrendered will, and now, facing him with her steady eyes, she seemed an independent, self-reliant woman. For an instant he wondered if he thoroughly understood her, but he put this misgiving away from him.
“You must do whatever you wish, of course,” he said gently. “But it is--not that you are unhappy or that you are afraid?”
She turned towards him fiercely. “Yes,” she said, “I am afraid. How can any one be as happy as I am and not be afraid?”
He drew a long breath, he had forgotten that this was her first love.