Don't you think so?" He held her close as he spoke,
and with a strange discrepancy between sight and sound, looked at her with
dim eyes of love, before which she had to close down her own. To his,
"Don't you think so?" she could only murmur without breath, "You mustn't
love me so much--not yet, not yet!" but he pressed her the nearer and
laughed his joy of her. "What! After eight years! And if I don't hold her
very close, Mab, the tricksy sprite, may slip me."
Then he returned to his moralisings. "You'll see Ingram, my blessed one,
don't you think?"
She said gravely, with hard outlook upon the distant wold, "Yes, I must
see him--" and then, with a sudden turn to him and a wondrous veil of
tenderness upon her eyes, "You know that I think what you think from now
onwards." Their lips sealed the pact.
He broke away at last. "Practice! Practice! Do let's be practical. Think
of this. My house is yours until we marry; that can't be for a week." A
week! This was Senhouse practical. She blushed her answer.
"What will you do? I mustn't turn you out." He opened his arms wide to the
airs of the down.
"I sleep in the open. The stars for me. They shall see you wedded.
Meanwhile, I shall wait upon you.
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