"I LOVE KATE."
He looked through the window, and saw her examine it by the candle. As she read the inscription, her face, glorified by the light, assumed a celestial tenderness he had never seen it wear before.
She came back and leaned eloquently out as if she would fly to him. "O Griffith, Griffith!" she murmured, and somehow or other their lips met, in spite of all the difficulties, and grew together in a long and tender embrace.
It was the first time she had ever given him more than her hand to kiss, and the rapture repaid him for all.
But as soon as she had made this great advance, virginal instinct suggested a proportionate retreat.
"You must go to bed," she said, austerely; "you will catch your death of cold out here."
He remonstrated: she insisted. He held out: she smiled sweetly in his face, and shut the window in it pretty sharply, and disappeared. He went disconsolately down his ivy ladder. As soon as he was at the bottom, she opened the window again, and asked him, demurely, if he would do something to oblige her.
He replied like a lover; he was ready to be cut in pieces, drawn asunder with wild horses, and so on.
"O, I know you would do anything stupid for me," said she; "but will you do something clever for a poor girl that is in a fright at what she is going to do for you?"
"Give your orders, mistress," said Griffith, "and don't talk of me obliging you. I feel quite ashamed to hear you talk so,—to-night especially."