ation had not left Miltoun. His sallow face was flushed, his eyes
glowed with a sort of beauty; and Audrey Noel who, better than most
women, could read what was passing behind a face, saw those eyes with the
delight of a moth fluttering towards a lamp. But in a very unemotional
voice she said:

"So you have come to breakfast. How nice of you!"

It was not in Miltoun to observe the formalities of attack. Had he been
going to fight a duel there would have been no preliminary, just a look,
a bow, and the swords crossed. So in this first engagement of his with
the soul of a woman!

He neither sat down nor suffered her to sit, but stood looking intently
into her face, and said:

"I love you."

Now that it had come, with this disconcerting swiftness, she was
strangely calm, and unashamed. The elation of knowing for sure that she
was loved was like a wand waving away all tremors, stilling them to
sweetness. Since nothing could take away that knowledge, it seemed that
she could never again be utterly unhappy. Then, too, in her nature, so
deeply, unreasoningly incapable of perceiving the importance of any
principle but love, there was a secret feeling of assurance, of triumph.
He did love her! And she, him! Well! And suddenly panic-stricken, lest
he should take back those words, she put her hand up to his breast, and
said:

"And I love you."

The feel of his arms round her, the strength and passion of that moment,
were so terribly sweet, that she died to thought, just looking up at him,
with lips parted and eyes darker with the depth of her love than he had
ever dreamed that eyes could be. The madness of his own feeling kept him
silent. And they stood there, so merged in one another that they knew
and cared nothing for any other mortal thing. It was very still in the
room; the roses and carnations in the lustre bowl, seeming to know that
their mistress was caught up into heaven, had let their perfume steal
forth and occupy every cranny of the abandoned air; a hovering bee, too,
circled round the lovers' heads, scenting, it seemed, the honey in their
hearts.

It has been said that Miltoun's face was not unhandsome; for Audrey Noel
at this moment when his eyes were so near hers, and his lips touching
her, he was transfigured, and had become the spirit of all beauty. And
she, with heart beating fast against him, her eyes, half closing from
delight, and her hair asking to be praised with its fragrance, her c