“And I love you,” the girl-widow answered, a flush dyeing her cheeks. “But I ought not to tell you yet, ought I?”
There was that in her radiant tear-dewed eyes that stirred the deepest stores of tenderness in the man. His finer instincts, vandal and pagan though he was, responded to it.
“It is right that you should tell me, since it is true, but it is right, too, that we should wait.”
“It is sweet to know that you love me. There are so many things I don’t understand. You must help me. You are so strong and so sure, and I am so helpless.”
“You dear innocent, so strong in your weakness,” he murmured to himself.
“You must be a guide to me and a teacher.”
“And you a conscience to me,” he smiled, not without amusement at the thought.
She took it seriously. “But I’m afraid I can’t. You know so much better than I do what is right.”
“I’m quite a paragon of virtue,” he confessed.
“You’re so sure of everything. You took it for granted that I loved you. Why were you so sure?”