“Do you really mean it?” she exclaimed at last in a feverish whisper, disengaging herself from his strong arms. “You are not just flirting with me? You are not doing this just to pass the time away, or because this beautiful spot has intoxicated your brain?”
She paused.
“Can all that is happening be really true,” she exclaimed ardently. “Or is it only a beautiful dream from which I shall presently awake?”
“It is no dream, my darling,” he murmured, taking her face between his hands and gazing down into her lovely eyes as though they mesmerized him.
“I want you, my dear; I want you dreadfully; you can have no idea how I yearn for you! Yes, I ask you now if you will become my wife, for I know you are the first woman I have ever truly loved.”
He bent forward and kissed her again passionately on the lips. As he did so he felt her body quiver.
He had meant to return to the hotel within an hour or two, but more than three hours had passed and still they did not go back. The sun was setting now, and from where they sat the shadow of the trees on a sheltered spot near the summit of the wooded cliff, a magnificent view of the entire bay unfolded itself beneath them.
But of that both were oblivious. They could see nothing but each other’s eyes, hear nothing but each other’s voices. The world might have fallen in without their knowing.
The sun, which all day had blistered the scorched earth, had sunk in a halo of gray and purple streaked with seams of gold. Dusk was fading into darkness, and still neither moved. Cora’s head rested in his lap. His fingers, buried in her soft hair, toyed gently with it. Again he bent down and kissed her with all the ardor of his soul.
Night had set in when at last they rose to go. Cora felt supremely happy. Her brief married life, when she looked back on it, now seemed to her a nightmare; her future married life, on the contrary held all sorts of hopes. Would she have been as happy with Sir Stephen Lethbridge—the question came unbidden into her thoughts—as she felt she would be with the man she had now accepted?