She laughed happily.
"Shy--of me!"
He tried to laugh, too, and kissed her abruptly, awkwardly. All his
natural grace was gone from him. But when he kissed her she did not know
it; her lips clung to his with a tender passion, a fealty that terrified
him.
"She must know!" he thought. "She must feel the truth. My lips must tell
it to her."
And when at last they drew away from each other his eyes asked her
furiously a question, asked it of her eyes.
"What is it, Maurice?"
He said nothing. She dropped her eyes and reddened slowly, till she
looked much younger than usual, strangely like a girl.
"You haven't--you haven't----"
There was a sound of reserve in her voice, and yet a sound of triumph,
too. She looked up at him again.
"Do you guess that I have something to tell you?" she said, slowly.
"Something to tell me?" he repeated, dully.
He was so intent on himself, on his own evil-doing, that it seemed to him
as if everything must have some connection with it.
"Ah," she said, quickly; "no, I see you weren't."
"What is it?" he asked, but without real interest.
"I can't tell you now," she said.
Gaspare went by the window leading the donkeys.
"Buona notte, signora!"
It was a very happy voice.
"Buona notte, Gaspare. Sleep well."
Maurice caught at the last words.
"We must sleep," he said. "To-morrow we'll--we'll----"
"Tell each other everything. Yes, to-morrow!"
She put her arm through his.
"Maurice, if you knew how I feel!"
"Yes?" he said, trying to make his voice eager, buoyant. "Yes?"
"If you knew how I've been longing to be back! And so often I've thought
that I never should be here with you again, just in the way we were!"
He cleared his throat.
"Why?"
"It is so difficult to repeat a great, an intense happiness, I think. But
we will, we are repeating it, aren't we?"
"Yes."
"When I got to the station to-day, and--and you weren't there, I had a
dreadful foreboding. It was foolish. The explanation of your not being
there was so simple. Of course I might have guessed it."
"Of course."
"But in the first moment I felt as if you weren't there because I had
lost you forever, because you had been taken away from me forever. It was
such an intense feeling that it frightened me--it frightened me horribly.
Put your arm round me, Maurice. Let me feel what an idiot I have been!"