Bettina, with her face buried in her hands, remained profoundly still. When he had waited a moment he began to fear that he had overtaxed her strength too far, and that she might have fainted.
Kneeling in front of her, he took her two wrists gently in his hands and tried to draw them away from her eyes. The strong resistance that she made to this gave evidence enough that she was conscious in every sentient nerve.
"Forgive me," he said; "I am going--I have been wrong to force all this upon you--but it is the last time that we shall meet. Let me, I pray you, see your face once more before I turn away from it forever."
The tense hands relaxed within his grasp, but he caught no more than a second's glimpse of the beautiful face before it was hid against his shoulder.
At the same instant a low voice whispered in his ear:
Overwhelmed with wonder, he felt the hands which he had grasped now holding fast his own, that she might compel him to the stillness which she had commanded. Then the soft voice at his ear went on:
"You were right in saying that I did not love you--that you would have urged me into a marriage to which I could not have brought the true feeling. I did not know it then, but I know it now. And I know it now because--because--" her voice trembled and her breath came quick--"because now I do love you. Oh, Horace, better love than this man could not have or woman give."
She ended in a burst of tears, and her exhausted body leaned against him for support.
For a moment he felt an amazement so overwhelming that he seemed half unconscious from the whirling in his brain. Then, as a lightning flash lights up the whole dark heaven in an instant's time, the truth was revealed to him, and, with that consciousness, his arms were tight about her and his kisses on her lips.
If he questioned her at all, it was with his spirit, and her answer came in that ineffable sense of union which fused their souls in one. For long still moments they rested so, in that embrace, and when they moved apart and looked into each other's eyes it was to take up forever that united life which was to bind them in true marriage.
When Nora returned from church she found them sitting quietly before the fire, the lamp burning brightly under the kettle, from which the Lady Hurdly that was and was to be had just made tea for her lord.