“I have come for your answer,” he said in the low voice that thrills; the voice which says so much more than the mere words.  “I could not wait—­I tried to keep away from you until to-morrow; but it was of no use.  I am here, you see, and I want your answer.  Don’t tell me it is ‘No!’ Trust me, Ida—­trust to my love for you.  I will devote my life to trying to make you happy.  Ah, but you know!  What is your answer?  Have you thought—­you promised me you would think?”

“I have thought,” she said, at last.  “I have thought of nothing else—­I wanted to tell you the truth—­to tell you truly as I would to myself—­but it is so hard to know—­Sometimes when I think that you may go away, and that I may not see you again, my heart sinks, and I feel, oh! so wretched.”

He waited for no more, but caught her to him, and as she lay in his arms only slightly struggling, her face upturned, he bent his own, almost white with passion, and kissed her on the lips, and not once only.

The blood rushed to her face, her bosom rose and fell, and, her face grown pale again, her eyes gazed up into his half fiercely, half appealingly; then suddenly they grew moist, as if with tears, her lips quivered, and from them came, as if involuntarily, the words of surrender, the maiden confession: 

“I love you!”

He uttered a low, sharp cry, the expression of his heart’s delight, his soul’s triumph.

“You love me!  Ida!  How—­how do you know—­when?” She shook her head and sighed, as she pressed her cheek against his breast.

“I don’t know.  It was just now—­the moment when you kissed me.  Then it came to me suddenly—­the knowledge—­the truth.  It was as if a flash of light had revealed it to me.  Oh, yes, I love you.  I wish—­almost I wish that I did not, for—­it hurts me!”

She pressed her hand to her heart, and gazed up at him with the wonder of a child who is meeting its first experience of the strange commingling of pain and joy.

He raised her in his arms until her face was against his.

“I know—­dearest,” he said, almost in a whisper.  “It is love—­it is always so, I think.  My heart is aching with longing for you, and yet I am happy—­my God, how happy!  And you?  Tell me, Ida?”

“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?”