Maurice stopped.
"Whose voice means so much to you?" he said.
"Why do you care to ask?"
"Is it mine?"
The girl had stopped too. Her face was set towards the sea and its great sincerity, which murmurs against the lies and the deceptions of many lives that defile the land, and takes so many more to itself that they may persist no longer in their evil doing. And perhaps it was her vision of the sea that swept from Lily any desire to be a coquette, or to be maidenly,—that is, false. She looked from the sea into Maurice's eyes.
"Yes," she answered. "It is yours."
"You love me then, Lily?"
"Yes, I love you, Maurice."
There was no tremor in her voice. There was no shame in her eyes. Alone in her chamber on the night of Maurice's confession she had flushed and trembled. Now she stood before him and made this great acknowledgement simply and fearlessly. And yet she knew that he did not love her with the desire of man to the woman whom he chooses out of the world to be his companion. She was moved by a resolve that was very great to ignore all that girls think most of at such a moment. Maurice took a step towards her. How true and how strong she looked.
"I dare not ask you to share my life," he said. "It is too shadowed, too sad. I have not the right."