The gold woman looked up, starting to repeat the line as Paul finished it. What was on her lips died there, unutterable in the light of his gaze, and what it awakened in her. Her eyes flashed back to his an answer of fire. The barriers of his determination crashed.
"Oh, my darling!" he cried in anguish, and he drew her head to his breast.
The gold woman's mouth met his and clung, rendering with flame its first kiss of love.
"Oh, I love you, woman of all the world, love you, love you! I am living alone by the power of this love. It has been mine for ages. It has been—it is my strength! It is my soul! It is the breath of my soul! Its single impulse, its desire, its law, its life!"
He held her from him and searched her face.
"And I love you. I have always loved you, my——"
A burning kiss blurred the words on her lips.
In silence they held each other's gaze in adoration until suddenly a shadow of dread darkened the man's face.
"Another storm such as we have just passed through——We could not live through it, darling. There was hardly a minute of last night or the day before which did not come armed with a summons to judgment. And, oh, the bitterness that was mine when I thought that you could not know; that I could not tell you what was in the soul of me!"
"But, Paul, even had death come to us then, I should have known it—afterward. I should have known it and you would have known that I loved you."