I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not signify
what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was persuaded
of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.

"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life. It was an early
spring that year. I had fallen away already from my resolution, and used
to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the evening with them as
before. One afternoon I came up to the sitting-room; the light was
failing--it was warm, and the windows were open. In the air was that
feeling which comes to you once a year, in the spring, no matter where
you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in a forest; only once--a
feeling like--but I cannot describe it.

"Eilie was sitting there. If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you what
it means to be near the woman one loves. She was leaning on the
windowsill, staring down into the street. It was as though she might be
looking out for some one. I stood, hardly breathing. She turned her
head, and saw me. Her eyes were strange. They seemed to ask me a
question. But I couldn't have spoken for the world. I can't tell you
what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope. I have been in
nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when the
lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt what I was
feeling at that moment. I knew something was coming; and I was paralysed
with terror lest it should not come!" He drew a long breath.

"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell. All that night I
lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the colour coming
slowly up in her cheeks--"It was three days before I plucked up courage
to go again; and then I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a
'cat's cradle' with a bit of string, but I could see them stealing up
from her hands to my face. And she went wandering about the room,
fingering at everything. When her father called out: 'What's the matter
with you, Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong. I
looked straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't;
and a minute later she went out of the room. God knows what sort of
nonsense I talked--I was too happy.

"Then began our love. I can't tell you of that time. Often and often
Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child? Nothing I can do pleases
her.' All the love she had given him was now for me; but he was too
simple and straight to see what wa