"You mean that you are still unmarried? Strange!"
"Strange that a woman should keep her troth, Gilbert? There came no word of your death. I only had patience--only waited, just as any right woman would have done."
"Hm----" It was not the answer which Gilbert had anticipated, if indeed he anticipated any. It startled him, and made him look more carefully in her face. Illuminated by the momentary exaltation of her nerves, she really looked attractive then, and there was a glowing warmth in her eyes resting on his own which thrilled him, and held him in a spell not to be shaken off, though he tried. It turned back the pages of his memory and opened a far-back chapter where ardent passages were inscribed--a chapter broken off in the middle; and then a leaf had been turned, and new chapters with new interests and new ardours had written themselves in--the stirring interests and eager ardours of an intenser life--and the old chapter had remained unfinished, and even the part written had been forgot.
Now, the old passage was again before him, and he felt a drawing back to the old-time idyl, and an impulse to carry it on and complete it. Yet there was a thinness in this proffered draught of love, which did not now as of old attract his sophisticated palate. It seemed like whey to the shepherd's son who has sojourned in cities and revelled in stronger drinks--wholesome, but not exhilarating. The bowl was at his lips, but he hesitated to drink. His glance waxed unsteady beneath the gaze of blissful trust which beamed on him. He coughed again to break the confusing silence, and would have spoken, but he could think of nothing to say.
And then the damsel's look grew clouded, in sympathy with, or in consequence of, his confusion; and with a little gasping sob and a tighter clutch at his hand, which she still was holding, she spoke, half whispering--
"And you? You--you are not married, Gilbert?" and her eyes rose shrinkingly to his face, with an eager frightened look, as if she dreaded to hear his answer.
"N--no--that is--no--certainly not! What makes you suppose such things? I have no thought----Tush! you put me out asking ridiculous questions. I forget what I am saying;" and he laughed uneasily, looking most unnecessarily confused over so simple an avowal.
His confusion was unnoticed, however. Maida looked up in his face once more, as trustingly as ever; or more so, for now there was the triumph of proud possession. Her ten years' waiting was accomplished; her love was come to claim her. The stony road she had been travelling so wearily and alone, was behind her now. It grew radiant in retrospect by the light of the joy she had now attained, even as the toils of battle seem glorious in the lustre of the victory which they have achieved. Her love was come to claim her! She stood up closer and looked into his face, with upturned lips, awaiting the seal of their reunion.
It did not come. The omnibus was drawing up at the platform, and Gilbert, calling a porter, turned away to point out his luggage. Maida went in pursuit of her own, and to the surprise of the driver, had it restored to the place on the roof whence it had been lifted an hour or two before, and then followed Gilbert inside, to return to Clam Beach.