Kitty looking at me, with a strange and timid look. As if she were not certain that I would be glad to see her. As if she doubted whether I could love her any more; as if her soul in earth and heaven hung on the next moment.
I could not go to her, and I could not say a word; and to tell the truth, I don’t know what I did. But I must have spread my arms, by some gift of nature; for before I could think of it, there she was; weeping—as I never could have thought it possible for any one, even in this world of tears, to weep.
Then she put up her hand, with the fingers thrown back, and stroked my cheeks gently, and said—“How thin! How thin!” Then she threw both arms around my neck, and drew my face down to her lips, and covered every inch of it with sobbing kisses. I pressed her sweet bosom to mine, and our hearts seemed to beat into one another.
“Oh, Kit, my own, own dear old Kit! Can you ever forgive me? Ever?”
She said this I dare say fifty times, scarcely allowing me to speak, for she said it was not good for me; withdrawing and feigning to be ashamed of her passionate love every now and then; and then rushing into my embrace again. Then she stood up, and threw back her beautiful hair, and said with the glance which she knew I adored—
“Well, how do you think I am looking, love? Don’t you think it is high time to tell me?”
She was wearing some foreign dress, beautifully cut, which set off her figure; and she knew it very well.
“I never saw you looking half so lovely,” I replied; “though I thought it impossible to improve you.”
“Sun-burnt, and freckled, and mosquito-bitten. But never mind, dear, if you love your own wife. We’ll soon make all that right again. Oh, I have been too wild! Feel how my heart is jumping.”
She was threatened with hysterics; but I soothed her gently, and she rested on my breast with her eyes half closed. As I looked at her, I felt that in this rapture I could die.