His grasp hurt her knuckles. “Yes, dear, I have seen. It's very sweet. It's the mother in you, Bibi, and my helplessness. Of course! What could a woman love in a dependent, half-corpse of a no-man?”
For a moment she was too surprised to speak. She stared at him. “What a notion! and it isn't true! You never were any more a man than you've been through these two dreadful years.” She sounded fairly indignant. “And for my part, I never appreciated what you were half as much.”
“Love doesn't begin with a P,” he remarked to the opposite wall.
“But what do you suppose the purpose was?”
“Love?”
“More. You.”
“You never told me.” That strange voice and averted face!
“How should I fancy you wouldn't know? I had never thought it out myself until just now. It has simply been going on from day to day, as natural and quiet as growing—” A bewildering illumination was spreading in her mind. “Look here, young man”—she forced his face around to see it,—“what goblins have you been hatching in the night-watches?” The raillery broke. “Dear, is that what has been troubling you? Is there anything else?”
He looked at her now. “Anything else trouble me, if I really have you, and a chance to do a little something for you?”
It was their apotheosis. They had never known a moment equal to it before; could never know just another such again. In a very deep way it was the first kiss of love for them both.