‘I have been half mad,’ he went on, ‘but I am cured now. I can do nothing by halves, Cecilia.’ ‘I hope you may never love me by halves.’ ‘Say Gilbert.’ ‘Gilbert.’ ‘How perfect it sounds on your lips! I never thought of admiring my name before.’ ‘Gilbert Speid,’ repeated she. ‘It is beautiful.’ ‘Cecilia Speid is better,’ he whispered. She disengaged herself gently, and stood looking over the water. The shadow lay across it and halfway up the opposite bank. He watched her. ‘I have lived more than thirty years without you,’ he said. ‘I cannot wait long.’ She made no reply. ‘We must speak to my aunt,’ she said, after a pause. ‘We cannot tell what she may think. At least, I shall not be going far from her.’ ‘I cannot offer you what many others might,’ said he, coming closer. ‘I am not a rich man. But, thank God, I can give you everything you have had at Morphie. Nothing is good enough for you, Cecilia; but you shall come first in everything. You know that.’ ‘If you were a beggar, I would marry you,’ she said. Honesty, in those days, was not supposed to be a lady’s accomplishment, but, to Cecilia, this moment, the most sacred she had ever known, was not one for concealment of what lay in the very depths of truth. She had been unconscious of it at the time, but she now knew that that first moment at the dovecot had sealed the fate of her heart. Looking back, she wondered why she had not understood. ‘May God punish me if I do not make you happy,’ said Gilbert, his eyes set upon her. ‘A woman is beyond my understanding. How can you risk so much for a man like me? How can you know that you are not spoiling your life?’ ‘I think I have always known,’ said she. He stood, neither speaking nor approaching her. The miracle of her love was too great for him to grasp. In spite of the gallant personality he carried through life, in spite of the glory of his youth and strength, he was humble-hearted, and, before this woman, he felt himself less than the dust. In the old life in Spain which had slipped from him he had been the prominent figure of the circle in which he lived. His men friends had admired and envied him, and, to the younger ones, Gilbert Speid, who kept so much to himself, who looked so quiet and could do so many things better than they, was a model which they were inclined to copy. To women, the paradox of his personal attraction and irregular face, and the fact that he only occasionally cared to profit by his own advantages, made him consistently interesting. He had left all that and come to a world which took little heed of him, to find in it this peerless thing of snow and flame, of truth and full womanhood, and she was giving her life and herself into his hand. He was shaken through and through by the charm of her eyes, her hands, her hair, her slim whiteness, the movements of her figure, the detachment which made approach so intoxicating. He could have knelt down on the river-bank.