“You're not asking it,” she answered. “It is I who am asking it.”
“But I have no future—I may be an outcast to-morrow. I have nothing to offer you.” He spoke more firmly now, more commandingly.
“Don't you see, dear, that it is just because your future as obscure that I can do this? You never would have done it, I know,—and I couldn't face that. Don't you understand that I am demanding the great sacrifice?”
“Sacrifice!” he repeated. His fingers turned, and closed convulsively on hers.
“Yes, sacrifice,” she said gently. “Isn't it the braver thing?”
Still he failed to catch her meaning.
“Braver,” she explained, with her wonderful courage, “braver if I love you, if I need you, if I cannot do without you.”
He took her in his arms, crushing her to him in his strength, in one ineffable brief moment finding her lips, inhaling the faint perfume of her smooth akin. Her lithe figure lay passively against him, in marvellous, unbelievable surrender.
“I see what you mean,” he said, at length, “I should have been a coward. But I could not be sure that you loved me.”
So near was her face that he could detect, even under the obscurity of the branches, a smile.