A sudden flood of scarlet, so intense that it was almost pain, shot over Rotha's face, and her eyes drooped and failed utterly to meet his. She had been very near bursting into tears, woman's natural relief from overstrained nerves; but his kiss turned the current of feeling into another channel, and the sting of delight and pain was met by an overwhelming consciousness. Had she betrayed herself? What made him do that? It was good for Rotha just then that she was no practised woman of the world, not skilled in any manner of evasion or trick of deceptive art. If she had been; if she had answered his demonstration with a little cold, careless laugh, and turned it off with a word of derision; as I suppose she would if she had not been so utterly true and honest, according to a woman's terrible instinct of self-preservation, or preservation of her secret; he would have thought as he had thought before—she loves me as a child does. But the extreme confusion, and the lovely abasement of the lowered brow, went to his heart with their unmistakeable revelation. Instead of releasing her, he put both arms round her now and gently drew her up to him. But Rotha was by no means so clear in her mind as by this time he was. She did not understand his action, and so misinterpreted it. She made a brave effort to relieve him from what she thought overwrought gratitude.
"That is nothing to thank me for, Mr. Southwode," she said. "Any friend would have been anxious, in my place."
"True. Were you anxious simply as a friend, Rotha?"
Rotha hesitated, and the hesitation lasted till it amounted to an eloquent answer; and the arms that held her drew her a little closer.
"But I do not understand—" she managed to say.
"Do you not? I do. I think I can make you understand too."
But his explanations were wordless, and if convincing were exceedingly confusing to Rotha.
"But Mr. Southwode!—what do you mean?" she managed at last to say, trying to release herself.
"I mean, that you belong to me, and I belong to you, for the rest of our lives. That is what I mean."
"Are you sure?"