"I love you, dear," she murmured, with a softness indescribable. "I love you—best in all the world."
Then a shy smile lit her fair face, and she clung to him, hiding it against his breast.
"Best in all the world," he repeated ardently. "Mon, it's good to hear. So good. Say, and you're my best in all the world. You always will be. You are before all things in my life."
Then came long, silent moments, moments in which heart beat to heart and no spoken word but must have robbed them of something of their rapture. They were moments never to come again as long as both might live. With all the strength of mature years they loved for the first time, and the ripeness of imagination swept them with a perfect storm of delirious joy. They were moments when soul is laid bare to soul, and every nerve and sense is tuned in perfect sympathy. They were moments when the glad outpourings of two hearts mingled in a common flood which swept unchecked, unguided, speeding on to that far dreamland of perfect bliss.
Such moments are mercifully brief, or the balance of mind would soon stand in mortal jeopardy. So it came that later on the harmonious flood, speeding distantly from its source, lessened its frantic speed, and gently fell to a stream of calm delight.
They sat together talking, talking joyously of all those things which concerned the merging of their two lives. For Monica all her troubles, all her self-inflicted tortures were past and done with. There were no shadows. There was nothing on the horizon of her life to mar the sheen of a perfect, sunlit sky.
For the man those moments meant the crowning of his life's ambitions, the crowning of all that was best in him. He asked no more of the gods of fortune. So the tension of the force which always spurred him was relaxed, and, for the time, at least, he lay supine in the arms of his own dreaming senses, basking in the realms of Love's pleasant sunlight.
Then the spell was finally broken. Sanity was reawakened by the ticking clock, which stood among the trifling ornaments upon Monica's desk. The man became aware of its hands. The irresistible march of time would not be denied. He nodded at the accusing face without any enthusiasm.
"It's nearly seven," he said, with a smile. "Shall we go, or shall we——?"
His voice was caressing, and its caress was hard for the woman to resist. She knew that it was only for her to shake her head, and these moments of delight would be prolonged indefinitely.