He drew her hands up till they rested on his shoulders, and he smiled with happy contradiction into her face. He was very good-looking in his triumph, and she could not help rejoicing in his comeliness. The Greeks worshipped beauty, and were they so wrong? Youth and good looks ought to be part of love. Surely it is the ideal.
“Now you look as I knew you could look,” he said half dreamily; “your eyes are soft and velvety like the petals of the pansy. I must kiss them once again ... dear eyes ... beautiful eyes ... and I’ve looked into them such a long time, hoping to see them soften and glow as they do now. Claudia, if you knew how much I love you.”
“I wonder why,” she laughed, with the harmless coquetry of the woman who knows herself loved, “when there are such a number of women in the world.”
“There isn’t any woman comparable to you. I don’t realize now that another woman exists on the face of the earth. I feel as if you and I were standing on a desert island. There are many people on the other islands, of course, but not on ours.” He really meant it at the moment.
She pretended to laugh at his extravagance, but all the time she felt that this was the way a man should love a woman. Had she not felt like that when she had been in love with Gilbert? The world had consisted of Gilbert—and people. Of course, Frank loved her more than she did him, but that somehow evened up things a little. She had loved Gilbert more than he had loved her.
“Always I know how little severs me
From my heart’s country....”
he murmured.
“Then I saw the tombstones in the dark and their message,” she interrupted, the scene in the motor recurring to her.
“You saw——?”