“You know I do; you need not have asked. It is,” she pursued, with emotion, “far more a question whether--whether you care for me. I know you never will, never can, as you once did; but it has seemed to me at times that you almost hated me.” “Indeed?” with a beaming smile long foreign to his countenance; “I see you are more easily imposed upon than ever. You know very well, it is patent to even Geoffrey, that I have always loved you exactly three times better than you love me. It is not in your nature to love as I do, though I never make much fuss about my feelings; still you may as well know that you are more to me, ten times over, than anything in the world. Even at the worst of times it has always been the same. What troubled me most, when I thought I was dying, was, _not_ my many sins and shortcomings, _not_ the thought of a future world, _not_ what ought to come first with all of us, my soul; no, it was you, that I might only see you once more, even for an instant, was the prayer, the thought, that never left me night or day. I will not conceal from you, Alice, that I did my very best to stifle recollection, to forget you, to throw my whole heart into my profession. It was no good; nothing, not a draught of the Egyptian nepenthe itself would have banished you from my heart. When I first went to India I used to take long headlong rides, half in hopes of galloping away from my thoughts, half in hopes of killing myself. I sometimes think I was a little mad then.” “Reginald, you must have been,” she exclaimed with conviction. “Yes; you don’t half know how miserable I’ve been without you. Well, I quieted down in time, and when the fighting came off I took it out of myself in that way. But wherever I was, you were seldom absent from my mind; whether alone in my quarters, or sitting round a noisy camp fire, or on a still starry night, on the line of march, your face was ever before me. As to never caring for you as before, I believe I love you better--yes, better than when we were first married; though had anyone suggested such a possibility at the time, I would have throttled him on the spot. But do not,” he continued with a smile, “spread the fact among the young married ladies of your acquaintance; they might try and follow your example, with scarcely such happy results. Lovers’ quarrels are not _always_ the renewing of love.” “How can you joke on such a subject, Regy?” she asked almost inarticulately. “Well, then, I’ll be serious once more. Never, as long as you live, doubt my love for you, Alice. Do you believe in it now?” “I do,” she whispered, “and you have made me very, very happy.” “Then you can’t refuse to make _me_ happy! You have not given me one kiss yet, remember, and you have three years’ arrears to make up. To begin with, I’ll take the one you offered me the other night now.”