“I accept the gift of your heart and of your life, and I give you mine in exchange. I have never loved either.” She lifted her pure face to his; a cloud rushed across the sky, leaving the pale moon to illumine the young couple walking in silence in their dreamland. After a long pause Lionel spoke.
“Where shall I escort you? Where is your home?”
“Will you take me to Hertford Street, No. 110?”
And both looked down, for the first time suffused with shame at discovering their identity. Confusion overwhelmed him, not at their present state, but at the sudden thought of their past lives of indelicacy. He was the first to break the silence, for man, being essentially practical, must at once know more about what he finds out; and an Englishman above all must necessarily investigate his newly-conquered dominion. Perhaps this is the reason for their being such good colonists; they do not gaze long at the stars and sunsets of a new Continent, but very promptly turn to business, and to what they can make out of their discovery.
“What have you been doing all these last weeks, Gwen?”
She told him what her occupations had been; they were limited, it was true, but they had helped to open her eyes on a few of life’s problems.
“Have you been shut up in your room ever since the storm?”
“Nearly, with the exception of the day of the first exodus, when I felt I must either have some air, or die. I have been out once or twice since, at unearthly hours of the morning; but this is the first party I have been at—I could not risk meeting you. I had pictured our meeting very differently from what it has been; I dreaded it, and little imagined this would be the end of it.”
“No, sweetheart,” interrupted her lover, “you mean, the beginning of our life. Tell me all you did at home.”
“I have studied more, my dear Lionel, in these last weeks than in all my life before, including my school days. My books have been the sun rising and setting, the stars and the birds’ twitterings; I have thought of poetry, philosophy, and history—”
“Poor Gwen, how dull it must have been! Fancy you studying the works of nature, and imagining that you are a philosopher!”
“Forgive me, Gwen. I am more than cruel, I am unjust, for I am the last who ought to scoff or reprove. I stand here as a repentant sinner, only begging to kiss your hand and to be allowed to gaze on your beauty.”