“And what’s that, Hal?” she asked in a lower voice.
She could not meet his gaze. Her eyes lowered. He drew his arm about her as she drooped a little toward him.
“Listen to me!” he commanded, masterfully lying. “There’s never been anybody but you, Laura. There never will be. You’ve been in all my dreams, by night, my visions by day, up here in fairyland!”
His words were coming impetuously now. In his eyes the golden flame of desire was burning hot.
“You’re everything to me! Everything! I’ve sensed it for a long time, but only in the last month or two I’ve really understood. It all came to me in a kind of revelation, Laura, one day when I was translating a poem from the Hindustani.”
“A poem, Hal?” The girl’s voice was tremulous. Her eyes had closed. Her head, resting on his shoulder, thrilled him with ardor; and in his nostrils the perfume of her womanhood conjured up shimmering dream-pictures of the Orient—strange lands that, though unseen, he mysteriously seemed to know. “Tell me the poem, dear!” Laura whispered. “A love-poem?”
“Such a love-poem! Listen, sweetheart! It’s a thousand years old, and it comes from the dim past to tell you what I feel for you. It runs this way:
“Belovèd, were I to name the blossoms of the spring, And all the fruits of autumn’s bounteousness; Were I to name all things that charm and thrill, And earth, and Heaven, all in one word divine, I would name thee!
“Had I the gold of Punjab’s golden land, Had I as many diamonds, shining bright As leaves that tremble in a thousand woods, Or sands along ten thousand shining seas; Had I as many pearls of shifting hue As blades of grass in fields of the whole world, Or stars that shine on the broad breast of night, I’d give them all, a thousand, thousand times, To make thee mine!”
For a minute, while Hal watched her with calculation, Laura kept silence. Then she looked up at him, dreamy-eyed, and smiled.
“That’s wonderful, Hal. I only wish you meant it!”
“You _know_ I do! I want you, Laura—God, how much! You’re all I need to make my fairyland up here a heaven!”
“What—what do you mean, Hal? Are you asking me to—to be your wife?”
His face contracted, involuntarily, but he veiled his true thought with a lie. What mattered just a lie to gain possession of her in this golden hour of sunshine?