g.

"When did you love me?" she whispered.

"From the first, the very first, the first moment I laid eye on you. I
was mad for love of you then, and in all the time that has passed since
then I have only grown the madder. I am maddest, now, dear. I am almost
a lunatic, my head is so turned with joy."

"I am glad I am a woman, Martin--dear," she said, after a long sigh.

He crushed her in his arms again and again, and then asked:-

"And you? When did you first know?"

"Oh, I knew it all the time, almost, from the first."

"And I have been as blind as a bat!" he cried, a ring of vexation in his
voice. "I never dreamed it until just how, when I--when I kissed you."

"I didn't mean that." She drew herself partly away and looked at him. "I
meant I knew you loved almost from the first."

"And you?" he demanded.

"It came to me suddenly." She was speaking very slowly, her eyes warm
and fluttery and melting, a soft flush on her cheeks that did not go
away. "I never knew until just now when--you put your arms around me.
And I never expected to marry you, Martin, not until just now. How did
you make me love you?"

"I don't know," he laughed, "unless just by loving you, for I loved you
hard enough to melt the heart of a stone, much less the heart of the
living, breathing woman you are."

"This is so different from what I thought love would be," she announced
irrelevantly.

"What did you think it would be like?"

"I didn't think it would be like this." She was looking into his eyes at
the moment, but her own dropped as she continued, "You see, I didn't know
what this was like."

He offered to draw her toward him again, but it was no more than a
tentative muscular movement of the girdling arm, for he feared that he
might be greedy. Then he felt her body yielding, and once again she was
close in his arms and lips were pressed on lips.

"What will my people say?" she queried, with sudden apprehension, in one
of the pauses.

"I don't know. We can find out very easily any time we are so minded."

"But if mamma objects? I am sure I am afraid to tell her."

"Let me tell her," he volunteered valiantly. "I think your mother does
not like me, but I can win her around. A fellow who can win you can win
anything. And if we don't--"

"Yes?"

"Why, we'll have each other. But there's no danger not winning your
mother to our marriage. She loves you too well."

"I should not like to break her heart," Ru