Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/304

 "That's fine! That's something like it. Say more!" she cried.

His face clouded and he looked earnestly at her.

"Come, come, Miss Sallie, this is too cruel. I have torn my heart's deepest secrets open to you, and tremblingly laid my life at your feet, and you are laughing at me. I have paid you the highest homage one human soul can offer another. Surely I deserve better than this?"

"There, you do. Forgive me. I have seen so much shallow love making, I am never quite sure a boy's in dead earnest." She spoke now with seriousness.

"You cannot doubt my earnestness. I have spoken to you this morning the first words of love that ever passed my lips. One chamber of my soul has always been sacred. It was the throne room of Love, reserved for the One Woman waiting for me somewhere whom I should find. I would not allow an angel to enter it, and I hid it from the face of God. I have opened it this morning. It is yours."

She softly slipped her hand in his, and tremblingly said, while a tear stole down her cheek,

"I do love you!"

He bent over her hand and kissed it, and kissed it, while his frame shook with uncontrollable emotion. Then looking up through his dimmed eyes, he said,

"My darling, that was the sweetest music, that sentence, that I shall ever hear in this world or in all the worlds beyond it in eternity!"

"When did you first begin to love me?" she asked.

"I don't know. But I loved you the first moment you looked into my face while I was speaking that day. And I recognised you instantly as the Dream of my Soul. I have loved you for ever, ages before we were born in this world, somewhere, our souls met and knew