brought me. I have been living in a fool's paradise lately; every day, every hour, he has been close at hand, under my very eyes, and it smites me with a bitter, desolate pang to think that for a space he will be gone, his place stand empty, be out of reach of the sound of my voice, the touch of my hand.
I think Paul sees the misery of my face, for he takes it between his two hands, and looks at me with passionate love and tenderness.
"Is it not worth the pain of parting, sweetheart, to come back to each other again? Shall we not love even better for the days spent apart?"
"'Absence makes the heart grow fonder,"' I quote ruefully; "but we don't want to grew any fonder than we are now; and as to that hateful word, good-bye, I wish I had never, never got to say it to you!"
"When I come back," he says, "I will never leave you again until you are my wife; never any more, little Nell! I shall miss you horribly," he says, with a falter in his strong voice, as he winds a long tress of my hair round his neck; "I shall weary for a sight of your soft face, for a touch of your seet lips! Will you long for me, Nell?"
I look up into his dangerous, passionate, brown eyes—the eyes that have swayed me so absolutely from the beginning, and which, if they beckoned me over flood and flame and yawning pit, I must needs follow, never recking where my feet trod.
"I love you," I say, with a long-drawn, quivering sigh; "do you know what that means?"
"Never desert me, my angel," he says, looking down with almost fierce worship into my upturned face; "for if you do—better far had it been that I died before I met you."
