“Yes—I knew.”
“You’re the first woman I’ve ever wanted—for my wife.”
The word danced into the soft gloom of night merging into day, out across the wraith-like Park, up to the sky where pale stars spelled it before her. She murmured it, and he bent closer.
“Mine! Nancy—you don’t know how much it’s meant, seeing them gather round you and knowing that you were going to belong to me.”
Their lips were one again. At the moment she took no count of the assurance that had brooked no denial. She only throbbed to the strength of him and smiled into the eyes so close to hers.
The car sped past shadowy trees, past lamps paled against the rising dawn, through a world unreal not because light had not yet come but because these two were in a world apart. They spoke low, as lovers will though no one is there to hear; in short phrases, saying little yet so much, she seeking to hold close this wonder thing, he with the claim of the possessor.
“Why do you love me, Dick?” came finally the eternal question.
He told her the tale men have told women for centuries and will continue to tell them as long as the [307] ]world shall last. “I love you because you’re different from other women. There’s no one like you.”
“How—different?”
“Why analyze it? You’re You, complete, apart—wonderful.”