She was silent, but her eyes drooped a little lower.

“Will you not look at me, darling?” he asked in that mellifluous voice of his which no woman had yet been found strong enough to withstand.

“Why?” said Leam, vainly trying after her old self, and doing her best to speak as if the subject was indifferent to her, but failing, as how should she not?  The loud beatings of her heart rang in her ears, her lips quivered so that she could not steady them, and her eyes were so full of shame, their lids so weighted with consciousness, that truly she could not have raised them had she tried.

“Why?  Look at me and I will tell you,” was his smiling answer.

She turned to him, and, as once before, bound by the spell of loving obedience, lifted her heavy lids and raised her dewy eyes slowly till they came to the level of his.  Then they met his, and Edgar laughed—­a happy and abounding laugh which somehow Leam did not resent, though in general a laugh the cause of which she did not fully understand was an offence to her or a stupidity.

“Now I am satisfied,” he said in his sweetest voice.  “Now I know that the morning has not destroyed the dream of the night, and that you love me.  Tell it me once more, Leam, sweet Leam!  I must hear it in the open sunshine as I heard it in the starlight:  tell me again that you love me.”

Leam bent her pretty head to hide her crimson cheeks.  How hard this confession was to her, and yet how sweet!  How difficult to make, and yet how sorry she would be if anything came between them so that it was left unmade!

“Tell me, my Leam, my darling!” said Edgar again, with that delicious tyranny of love, that masterful insistence of manly tenderness, which women prize and obey.

“I love you,” half whispered Leam, feeling as if she had again forfeited her pride and modesty, and for the second time had committed that strange sweet sin against herself for which she blushed and of which she did not repent.

“And I love you,” he answered—­“fervently, madly if you like.  I never knew what love was before I knew you, my darling.  When you are all my own I will make you confess that the love of an English gentleman is worth living for.”

“You are worth living for,” said Leam with timid fervor, defending him against all possible rivalry of circumstance or person.  “I do not care about your English gentlemen.  It is only you.”

“That brute of a Jones!” muttered Edgar as he put his arm round her waist and glanced toward the door.

“No,” said Leam gravely, shrinking back, “you must not do that.”

“What a shy wild bird it is!” he said lovingly, though he was disappointed.  And he did not like this kind of disappointment.  “Will you never be tamed, my Leam?”

“Not to that,” said innocent Leam in the same grave way; and Edgar smiled behind his golden beard, but not so that she could see the smile.