"Now, see how perverse I am," he whispered passionately. "I do not want you to tell me anything just now . . . open your eyes, dear saint . . . for I but want to stand like this . . . and read in their blue depths . . . enjoying every fraction of a second of this heavenly moment. . . ." She tried to speak, but instinctively he stopped her. "No . . . no . . . do not speak. . . . And yet . . . 'tis from your sweet lips I'd have my final answer." He took her in his arms. She lay against him, unresisting, her sweet face turned up to his, soul meeting soul at last in the ecstasy of a first kiss. He held her to his heart. It seemed as if he could never let her go from him again. Everything was forgotten, the world had ceased to be. For him there was but one woman on this earth, and she was his own. CHAPTER XXIII CHECK TO THE QUEEN How long they stood thus, heart to heart, they themselves could never have said. The sound of many voices in the near distance roused them from their dream. Ursula started in alarm. "Holy Virgin!" she exclaimed under her breath, "if it should be the Queen!" But Wessex held her tightly, and she struggled in vain. "Nay! then let the whole Court see that I hold my future wife in my arms," he said proudly. But with an agitated little cry she contrived to escape him. He seemed much amused at her nervousness; what had she to fear? was she not his own, to protect even from the semblance of ill? But Ursula, now fully awakened to ordinary, everyday surroundings, was fearful lest her own innocent little deception should be too crudely, too suddenly unmasked. She had so earnestly looked forward to the moment when she would say to him that she in sooth was none other than Lady Ursula Glynde, the woman whom every conventionality had decreed that he should marry, and whom--because of these conventionalities--he had secretly but certainly disliked. Her woman's heart had already given her a clear insight into the character and the foibles of the man she loved. His passion for her now, sincere and great though it was, was partly dependent on that atmosphere of romance which his poetical temperament craved for, and which had surrounded the half-mysterious personality of exquisite, irresistible "Fanny." Instinctively she dreaded the rough hand of commonplace, that ugly, coarse destroyer of poetic idylls. A few hastily uttered words might shatter in an hour the mystic shrine wherein Wessex had enthroned her. She had meant to tell him soon, to-morrow perhaps, perhaps only after a few days, but she wished to find her own time for this, when he knew her inner soul better, and the delicate cobwebs of this great love-at-first-sight had fallen away from his eyes. She could not altogether have explained to herself why a sudden disclosure of her identity at this moment would have been peculiarly unpleasant to her. It was a weak, childish feeling no doubt. But such as it was, it was real, and strong, and genuine.