who but a moment before
quailed from his lightest touch now put her arms about his neck and
clung to him with a sense of protection and of refuge, the need of which
she had always and until that very moment disdained?

"Why should you be sorry because you spoke?" said Bennett. "I knew that
you loved me and you knew that I loved you. What does it matter if you
said it or did not say it? We know each other, you and I. We understand.
You knew that I loved you. You think that I have been strong and
determined, and have done the things I set out to do; what I am is what
you made me. What I have done I have done because I thought you would
approve. Do you think I would have come back if I had not known that I
was coming back to you?" Suddenly an impatient exclamation escaped him,
and his clasp about her tightened. "Oh! words--the mere things that one
can _say_, seem so pitiful, so miserably inadequate. Don't you know,
can't you feel what you are to me? Tell me, do you think I love you?"

But she could not bear to meet his glance just yet. Her eyes were
closed, and she could only nod her head.

But Bennett took her head in both his hands and turned her face to his.
Even yet she kept her eyes closed.

"Lloyd," he said, and his voice was almost a command; "Lloyd, look at
me. Do you love me?"

She drew a deep breath. Then her sweet dull-blue eyes opened, and
through the tears that brimmed them and wet her lashes she looked at him
and met his glance fearlessly and almost proudly, and her voice trembled
and vibrated with an infinite tenderness as she answered:

"I do love you, Ward; love you with all my heart."

Then, after a pause, she said, drawing a little from him and resting a
hand upon either shoulder:

"But listen, dear; we must not think of ourselves now. We must think of
him, so sick and weak and helpless. This is a terrible moment in our
lives. I don't know why it has come to us. I don't know why it should
all have happened as it has this morning. Just a few moments ago I was
angry as I never was in my life before--and at you--and now it seems to
me that I never was so happy; I don't know myself any more. Everything
is confused; all we can do is to hold to what we know is right and trust
that everything will be well in the end. It is a crisis, isn't it? And
all our lives and all our happiness depend upon how we meet it. I am all
different now. I am not the woman I was a half-hour ago. You must be
brave for me no