When, after a long time, he raised his head it was to look down into her face, flushed and glowing with a radiance that he had never seen before.
“I love you,” he said hoarsely. “Oh, God, how I love you! And to think that it was only last night after you had left me that I decided I must go abroad.”
“Go abroad!” she cried. “But why?”
“Because I could not bear to be near you any longer and not hold you like this, not kiss you and not beg you to marry me,” he answered. “Can you not understand, Clarinda, what I have been through, wanting you, thinking that my love was in vain and believing you spoke the truth when you said you hated me?”
“I don’t think that I ever hated you after I came to know you. And then I – loved you – I loved you – so much that I was – afraid of myself.”
“And yet y
