"Because I could not bear it one day longer," he answered. "All this time I have been breaking my heart to get a word with you, and never seeing you except at church, and there you would never even look at me. It is cruel of you, Letty. I know you could manage it, if you liked, well enough. Why should you try me so?" "Do speak a little lower, Tom: sound goes so far at night!--I didn't know you would want to see me like that," she answered, looking up in his face with a pleased smile. "Didn't know!" repeated Tom. "I want nothing else, think of nothing else, dream of nothing else. Oh, the delight of having you here all alone to myself at last! You darling Letty!" "But I must go directly, Tom. I have no business to be out of the house at this time of the night. If you hadn't made me think you were in some trouble, I daredn't have come." "And ain't I in trouble enough--trouble that nothing but your coming could get me out of? To love your very shadow, and not be able to get a peep even of that, except in church, where all the time of the service I'm raging inside like a wild beast in a cage--ain't that trouble enough to make you come to me?" Letty's heart leaped up. He loved her, then! Love, real love, was what it meant! It was paradise! Anything might come that would! She would be afraid of nothing any more. They might say or do to her what they pleased--she did not care a straw, if he loved her--really loved her! And he did! he did! She was going to have him all to her own self, and nobody was to have any right to meddle with her more! "I didn't know you loved me, Tom!" she said, simply, with a little gasp. "And I don't know yet whether you love me," returned Tom. "Of course, if you love _me_," answered Letty, as if everybody must give back love for love.