“Io, how long will it be, with Eyre? Before—”
“Oh; that!” The brilliance faded from her eager loveliness. “I don’t know. Perhaps a year. He suffers abominably, poor fellow.”
“And after—after that, how long before you can marry me?”
She twinkled at him mischievously. “So, after all these years, my lover makes me an offer of marriage. Why didn’t you ask me at Manzanita?”
“Good God! Would it possibly—”
“No; no! I shouldn’t have said it. I was teasing.”
“You know that there’s never been a moment when the one thing worth living and fighting and striving for wasn’t you.”
“And success?” she taunted, but with tenderness.
“Another name for you. I wanted it only as the reflex of your wish for me.”
“Even when I’d left you?”