Part 45

"How do you mean?" She tried to speak lightly, but her face was pale.

"You know very well what I mean. How do you know what I think, what I do, what I am? And the nights--no, don't try to get away from me--from that first night when I woke at four and knew you were crying, to that other night when you knew it was I who was awake with you, and all the nights since when the tide of time has turned between three and four! I've known your thoughts, your hopes, your dreams, as you've known mine!

"And the next day," he went on, "when you avoid me even with your eyes; when you try to hide with laughter and light words your consciousness of the fact that the night before you and I have met somewhere, in some mysterious way, and known each other as though we were face to face! Can you be miserable, and I not know it? Can I be tormented by a thousand doubts, and you not know it? Could you be ill, or troubled, or even perplexed, and I not know, though the whole world lay between us? Answer me!"

Edith's face was very white and her lips almost refused to move. "Oh, Boy," she whispered, brokenly. "What does it mean?"

"This," he answered, imperiously. "It means this--and now!"

He took her into his arms, crushing her to him so tightly that she almost cried out with the delicious pain of it. In the rose-scented shadow, his mouth found hers.

Time and space were no more. At the portal of the lips, soul met soul. The shaded veranda, and even the house itself faded away. Only this new-born ecstasy lived, like a flaming star suddenly come to earth.

Madame stirred in her sleep. Then she called, drowsily: "Alden! Edith!" No one answered, because no one heard. She got up, smothering a yawn behind her hand, wondered that there were no lights, waited a moment, heard nothing, and came to the window.

The moon flooded the earth with enchantment--a silvery ocean of light breaking upon earth-bound shores. A path of it lay along the veranda--opal and tourmaline and pearl, sharply turned aside by the shadow of the rose.

Madame drew her breath quickly. There they stood, partly in the dusk and partly in the light, close in each other's arms, with the misty silver lying lovingly upon Edith's hair.

She sank back into a chair, remembering, with vague terror, the vision she had seen in the crystal ball. So, then, it was true, as she might have known. Sorely troubled, and with her heart aching for them both, she crept up-stairs.

* * * * *

"Boy," whispered Edith, shrinking from him. "Oh, Boy! The whole world lies between you and me!"

His only answer was to hold her closer still, to turn her mouth again to his. "Not to-night," he breathed, with his lips on hers. "God has given us to-night!"

White and shaken, but with her eyes shining like stars, at last she broke away from him. She turned toward the house, but he caught her and held her back.

"Say it," he pleaded. "Say you love me!"

"I do," she whispered. "Oh, have pity, and let me go!"

"And I," he answered, with his face illumined, "love you with all my heart and soul and strength and will--with every fibre of my being, for now and for ever. I am yours absolutely, while earth holds me, and even beyond that."

Edith looked up quickly, half afraid. His eyes were glowing with strange, sweet fires.

"Say it!" he commanded. "Tell me you are mine!"

"I am," she breathed. "God knows I am, but no--I had forgotten for the moment!"

She broke into wild sobbing, and he put his arm around her with infinite tenderness. "Hush," he said, as one might speak to a child. "What has been does not matter--nothing matters now but this. In all the ways of Heaven, you are mine--mine for always, by divine right!"

"Yes," she said, simply, and lifted her tear-stained face to his.

He kissed her again, not with passion, but with that same indescribable tenderness. Neither said a word. They went into the house together, he found her candle, lighted it, and gave it to her.

She took it from him, smiling, though her hands trembled. Back in the shadow he watched her as she ascended, with a look of exaltation upon her face. Crimson petals were falling all around her, and he saw the stain of the rose upon her white gown, where he had crushed it against her heart.

Neither slept, until the tide of the night began to turn. Swiftly, to her, through the throbbing, living darkness, came a question and a call.

"Mine?"

Back surged the unmistakable answer: "Thine." Then, to both, came dreamless peace.