She had railed him on his extra seriousness, and he had answered,
“Don’t, Madge! you must know why I am grave and sad, to-night.” (He had never called her Madge before.)
“No, I don’t,” she had replied.
“In less than a week,” he went on, “so I have heard to-night, you leave Balhang. You are going to Europe, and will be away long months, perhaps a year.”
She had gazed at him in honest wonder, not fully grasping his meaning.
“Why,” she asked, “should that make you sad?”
He had leaned closer towards her. There was no one to see them. The heavy door-curtain had slipped from its hook, and shut them in. Where her hand rested on the rounded, polished arm of the piano, his larger hand had moved, and her white fingers were clasped in his larger ones. His eyes had sought hers, and, under the hypnotic power of the strong love in his eyes, she had been compelled to meet his gaze.
“I thought, dear, you must have seen how, for a long time, I had learned to love you, Madge.”
His clasp on her fingers had tightened. He had leaned nearer to her still. No man’s face, save her father’s, had ever been so close to hers before, and the contact strangely affected her. She felt the warmth of his breath, the heat of his clean, wholesome flesh; even the scent of the soap he had used—or was it some perfume in his clothing?—filled all her sense of smell.