“Dear one,” he said, “what is it you are fighting against, if it be not the coming back of love and joy?” He could not see her eyes. He did not wish to see them yet. This waiting was bliss, because there was hope in it. She had ceased to struggle, and was quiet in his arms. They stood so, many seconds, their hearts throbbing against each other, their cheeks pressed. In the unspeakable sweetness of his nearness, Harold felt against his face the moisture of a tear. “What is it?” he whispered. “You are crying! For God’s sake, tell me why!” A gentle little head-shake answered him; but she made no motion to draw herself away, and he, enraptured, held her close. “There is nothing--_nothing_ that you cannot tell to me,” he said, still in that whisper that thrilled the silence of the room. “Perhaps you do not understand. Listen, and I will make it all plain. I loved you then. I love you now. I have loved you through all the pain and silence in between. Oh, dearest, never dream but that you are still my own--wholly and unchangeably as I am yours--if only you love me!” She kept so still that he was puzzled. He made a motion to draw back his head and look at her, but she put up her hand and pressed his cheek still closer against hers. He passionately wished that she would speak; but there was no sound except that fluttered breathing, no motion but that little tremor which he felt against his side. She was weakening, weakening, weakening--he was sure of this; but he was in such an absolute terror of misunderstanding her mood that he dared not move or speak. As they stood there so, he felt a sudden tightening of the pressure of her arms. They strained him close against her. His heart leaped; but he was not sure. There was something that alarmed him even in that clasp of love. “Are you happy?” he whispered in the lowest murmur. But with a sudden wrench she tore herself away from him, and when he tried to follow, waved him back with a gesture which he could not disregard. “Happy!” she said in a voice that mocked the thought, as she wrung her hands together, and then, for a moment, hid her face in the curve of one tensely bended arm. “What have I to do with happiness?” she cried out, flinging wide her arms, and looking upward, as if appealing to some invisible presence rather than to him or to herself. “I had it given to me once in boundless measure, and I played with it, and tossed it from me. It was lightly and easily done, and now it cannot be undone.” Harold stood where her imperious gesture had stopped him, and looked at her in consternation. “What do you mean?” he said. “You will not try now to deny your love for me! You have owned it in that close embrace which can mean nothing but--” “Good-by!” she interrupted him. “It means inevitable parting. You must go, or, if not, I must fly to some place where we cannot meet again.”