The Long Night

by Stanley John Weyman

"Yes."

"Content!"

There are things, other than wine, that bring truth to the surface. That which had happened to the girl in the last few hours, that which had melted her into unwonted song, was of these things; and the tone of her voice as she repeated the word "Content!" the surrender of her eyes that placed her heart in his keeping, as frankly as she left her hands in his, proclaimed it. The reserves of her sex, the tricks of coyness and reticence men look for in maids, were shaken from her; and as man to man her eyes told him the truth, told him that if she had ever doubted she no longer doubted that she loved him. In the heart which a single passion, the purest of which men and women are capable, had engrossed so long, Nature, who, expel her as you will, will still return, had won her right and carved her kingdom.

And she knew that it was well with her—whatever the upshot of last night. To be lonely no more; to be no longer the protector, but the protected; to know the comfort of the strong arm as well as of the following eye, the joy of receiving as well as of giving; to know that, however dark the future might lower, she had no longer to face it alone, no longer to plan and hope and fear and suffer alone, but with him—the sense of these things so mingled with her gratitude on her mother's account that the new affection, instead of weakening the old became as it were part of it; while the old stretched onwards its pious hand to bless the new.

If Claude did not read all this in her eyes, and in that one word "Content?" he read so much that never devotee before relic rose more gently or more reverently to his feet. Because all was his he would take nothing. "As I stand by you, may God stand by me," he said, still holding her hands in his, and with the table between them.

"I have no fear," she replied in a low voice. "Yet—if you fail, may He forgive you as fully as I must forgive you. What shall I say to you on my part, Messer Claude?"

"That you love me."

"I love you," she murmured with an intonation which ravished the young man's heart and brought the blood to his cheeks. "I love you. What more?"

"There is no more," he cried. "There can be no more. If that be true, nothing matters."

"No!" she said, beginning to tremble under a weight of emotion too heavy for her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" she continued, raising her eyes which had fallen before the ardour of his gaze. "But there must be something you wish to ask me. You must wish to know——"