"Not till I have spoken once!" he cried. "Not till I have told you once what I think of you! Last night I heard. And I understood. I saw what you had gone through, what you had feared, what had been your life all these weeks, rising and lying down! I saw what you meant when you bade me go anywhere but here, and why you suffered what you did at their hands, and why they dared to treat you—so! And had they been here I would have killed them!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "And had you been here——"
"Yes?" she did not seek to check him now. Her bearing was changed, her eyes, soft and tender, met his as no eyes had ever met his.
"I should have worshipped you! I should have knelt as I kneel now!" he cried. And sinking on his knees he extended his arms across the table and took her unresisting hands. "If you no longer have a secret, you had one, and I bless God for it! For without it I might not have known you, Anne! I might not have——"
"Perhaps you do not know me now," she said; but she did not withdraw her hands or her eyes. Only into the latter grew a shade of trouble. "I have done—you do not know what I have done. I am a thief."
"Pah!"
"It is true. I am a thief."
"What is it to me?" He laughed a laugh as tender as her eyes. "You are a thief, for you have stolen my heart. For the rest, do you think that I do not know you now? That I can be twice deceived? Twice take gold for dross, and my own for another thing? I know you!"
"But you do not know," she said tremulously, "what I have done—what I did last night—or what may come of it."
"I know that what comes of it will happen, not to one but to two," he replied bravely. "And that is all I ask to know. That, and that you are content it shall be so?"
"Content?"