"My poor child! my little darling!" and his arms enclose her with a fond clasp, though her face is still hidden. It is so easy to go through a labyrinth with a clew. This is what Eugene's fondness meant, and he forgives him much. This is why she has grown grave and cold and retiring! He is back again with her dying father--has he kept faith? She has been his wife, it is true, but was there not a higher meaning in the bond? Her heart beats against his like some prisoned bird. She is so near--are they to be kept asunder all their lives? If she did not love Eugene, may she not learn to love him? "You said I could not love you," he cries. "How do you know, who told you? Is your wisdom of so blind a quality?" and he raises the face full of tears, that shrinks from being seen with all its secrets written in a burning blush. "Violet! Violet! are we both to blame? Is there not some certainty when people love each other?" He bends his face to hers, and kisses into the lips the sweet and sacred knowledge that electrifies her, that seems to rend the horizon of remembrance with a flash. Out there on the porch in that first entrancing waltz he half told his secret, that he had begun to love her! The knowledge comes with a thrill of exultation. "I think you love me a little," he says, "but, Violet, I want no grateful, gentle, passive regard. I must have my wife sweet, fond, adoring! Am I not as worthy of love as other men?" She raises her face and they glance steadily into each other's eyes, then hers droop under the stronger and more imperious will, the lip quivers, the flush deepens. "If you will--be glad--to have me love you," she murmurs, brokenly. "Glad!" And the tone tells the rest. He brings her back to the seat where they were so cold and grave a brief while ago. Is there any need of envying Polly in the great drawing-room? The rain pours in torrents, but it is a divine summer within. "Violet," he says, a long while afterward, "we have never been real lovers, you know. I am not sure but it would be better for me to go abroad. We could write letters, and you could decide how much you cared." She glances up in a dismay so wild that he feels inclined to laugh in pure joy. She studies out the meaning: it is for _her_ to say whether he shall go or not. "Oh, I shall keep you here! I shall be jealous and exigeant like Polly, and you----" She is the bright-eyed, sunny-faced girl he found on the rocky shore, and there is the same buoyant ring in her voice. "I shall be a jealous, tyrannical husband," he rejoins, giving the rose-leaf cheek a soft pinch. "You will hardly dare dream your soul is your own." "No, I shall not dream it," she answers, with gay audacity.