"I love you, Athalie."
Her gaze remained fixed on him as though she were trying to comprehend him,—sad, candid, searching in his eyes for an understanding denied her.
"Yes," she said vaguely, "my thoughts are full of you, too. They have always been since I first saw you. I suppose it has been love. I didn't know it."
"Is it love, Athalie?"
"I—think so, Clive. What else could it be—when a girl is always thinking about a man, always happy with her memories of him.... It is love, I suppose ... only I never thought of it that way."
"Can you think of it that way now?"
"I haven't changed, Clive. If it was love in the beginning, it is now."
"In the beginning it was only a boy and girl affair."
"It was all my heart had room for."