No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very flame of youth.
"Sweet, I'll be on the ship--I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed and at her low murmur, "Ready--?" he gave back, "Ready--for love," with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them.
"But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish gleam of laughter, "but--love?"
And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was the supreme exultation of triumphant daring.
For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the adventure and overcome the risk.
He had won. And he would hold his winnings.