"My darling, let it remain difficult. Only tell me now, if you can, that you love me."
"Yes, Jack," she said, not in the frank and childish unconsciousness of yesterday, but with the soft blush of a woman who is wooed. "Yes, Jack, I know now that I do love you, as you love me, because my heart beat when you kissed me, and I felt all of a sudden that you were all the world to me."
"Phil, I don't deserve it. I don't deserve you."
"Not deserve me? O Jack, you make me feel humble when you say that! And I am so proud.
"So proud and so happy," she went on, after a pause. "And the girls who know all along—how do they find it out?—want every one for herself this great happiness, too. I have heard them talk and never understood till now. Poor girls! I wish they had their—their own Jack, not my Jack."
Her lover had no words to reply.
"Poor boy! And you went about with your secret so long. Tell me how long, Jack?"
"Since the very first day I saw you in Carnarvon Square, Phil."
"All that time? Did you love me on that day—not the first day of all, Jack? Oh, surely not the very first day?"
"Yes; not as I love you now—now that I know you so well, my Phillis—mine—but only then because you were so pretty."