"Yes, I am happy," she breathed, with a deep sigh, as she nestled still
closer to him. "It is all so strange--so unreal!"
"Not unreal, dearest," he said, as they walked under the trees, her
head against his shoulder, his arm round her waist and supporting her.
"It is real enough, this love of mine--which will last me till my
death, I know; and yours?"
She gazed straight before her dreamily.
"There can be no heaven without you, without your love," she answered,
with a solemn note in her sweet voice.
He pressed her to him.
"And you have thought it all out. You have realised that you will be my
wife--my very own?"
"Yes," she said. "I know now. I know that I am giving you myself, that
I am placing all my life in your hands."
"God help me to guard it and make it happy!" he said; then he laughed.
"I have no fear! I will make you happy, Ida! I--I feel that I shall. Do
you understand what I mean? I feel as if I had been set apart, chosen
from all the millions of men, to love you and cherish you and make you
happy! And you, Ida?"
She looked up at him with the same far-away, dreamy expression in her
wonderful eyes.
"Now at this moment I felt that I, too, have been set apart for you: is
it because you have just said the same? No, because I felt it when you
kissed me just now. Ah, I am glad you did it! If you had not I might
not have known that I loved you, I might have let you go forever,
thinking that I did not care. It was your kiss that opened my heart to
me and showed me--."
He bent over her until his lips nearly touched hers. "Kiss me in
return--of your own accord, Ida! But once, if you will; but kiss me!"
Without a blush, solemnly as if it were a sacrament, she raised her
head and kissed him on the lips.
There fell a silence. The world around them, in the soft shimmer of the
crescent moon, became an enchanted region, the land that never was on
earth or sea, the land of love, in which all that dwell therein move in
the glamour of the sacred Fire of Love.
Stafford broke it at last. It is the man who cannot be contented with
silence; he thirsts for his mistress's voice.