‘Jerome!’ she said faintly, as he took her hands with gentle violence from before her face, and knelt on one knee beside her chair to do so. His ‘Look at me!’ rang in her ears; his eyes, which she felt were fixed upon her, attracted her irresistibly. Why was she so reluctant, so fearful of looking up? Perhaps because she knew that when their glances met her last power of concealment or resistance would be gone. ‘Sara!’ he whispered, and his voice, so near and so impassioned, at last compelled the look he demanded. Was it rapture, or was it pain—an agony of pain—that she felt? Was it the anguish of having to confess that she was mastered, conquered? She did not know. As he clasped her in his arms, and pressed his lips upon her lips, and kissed her cheek, her hair, her closed eyes, she felt that it might be heaven indeed, but that her heart was breaking with the greatness of her joy. Perhaps to reach heaven—to finally pass through its inner portals—a heartbreak might be necessary. ‘Do you remember when I was singing at Trockenau, and the countess thought I did it to oblige her?’ he asked presently. ‘Do I remember, Jerome? Shall I ever forget it? I have listened to no singing since. I could not, and would not.’ ‘I sang _Adeläida_, if you remember?’ he said, but his eyes dwelt upon her face with an intentness which she felt to be almost tyrannous. ‘Yes, and you sang “_Ich grolle nicht_.” Why did you sing that?’ she said, with a kind of faint shudder. ‘It is such a terrible song.’ ‘Why—I do not know. But tell me, was I right to come to-night?’ he asked, persuasively. ‘I fought a long battle with myself, as I told you. I was undecided up to the very moment of entering the house.’ ‘Right, yes! I say you were right, at least. What if you had gone to England without coming? What if I had never known—oh, Jerome, it is horrible to think of!’ ‘For me! I feel that I came to you a beggar, and that I sit here a king, and with more than a king’s riches. I cannot repent.’ ‘Did you think there was something wrong in it?’ she asked, anxiously. ‘Wrong, no! Is it wrong to love the sun, and to go by preference where he shines? What I felt to be wrong was my coming to monopolise you—if I could persuade you to be monopolised by me—just when I have the least right to do so—when I can only say, “I love you, and always shall love you,” but cannot say, “Come and be my wife at once.”’ ‘Knowing that you love me, I can wait,’ she answered. ‘Surely, the highest and best kind of love is that which sustains us through waiting and trouble—not that hideous parody of love which must not be spoken unless the lover can say at one and the same time, “I love you—I have got a house for you, and enough money to keep you—will you marry me?”’ ‘Rampant philistinism!’ said Jerome. ‘I had no idea before, that I had so much of it in me. You read me a lesson.’