“I—I never thought that you loved me,” she said suddenly. But the look in her splendid eyes, the tone of her voice, the rare sweet smile which parted her lips in sheer gladness, unconsciously shown at my confession, told me more than a whole volume of words could have told me.
And slowly my lips met hers in a long kiss—a long, long kiss of ecstatic love—a kiss that changed my whole life from that moment.
“I love you, dearest. I love you with all my soul,” I said, looking down at the pale, thin little face that rested upon my shoulder as she lay.
“You love me?” Her words were scarcely a breath, but I heard them clearly enough in the silence of the room.
“I love you,” I repeated, with fervour and simplicity. “I love you, Asta, as I have never loved, and as I shall never love again. But you—it is of you that I have had the doubt; it is your love that I have feared I might not yet have won. Have you nothing to say to me? You rest here in my arms. You have let me kiss your lips—”
Through the room there sounded a half laugh, half sob that silenced me. Two soft arms wound themselves about my throat and lay softly there; two sweet tear-dimmed eyes looked straight into mine with something in their depths that held me silent for sheer joy; and two warm lips lifted to mine gave me back, shyly, one out of my many caresses.
“Yes, Lionel, I do love you,” she said at last, so low that I had to bring my ear close to her lips to catch the words. “And—and if you really mean that you want me for your wife—”
“Really mean it!” I echoed. “My dear love, cannot you understand that I live for you alone—only you—that for you to be my wife is the greatest, almost the only wish of my life?”
“Then it shall be as you wish,” she said softly. What passionate words escaped me I do not remember. All I know is that our lips met again and again many, many times, and we sat in each other’s embraces childishly blissful in our new-born happiness.
For a long time, indeed, no further word was spoken between us. Our minds were too full for mere uttered phrases.