The whole tale was told now, in one touch,
in one look, with little resistance and less fear.
"I love you," he said slowly and earnestly, and the words were strange
to his own ears.
For he had never said them before, nor had she ever heard them, and when
they are spoken in that way they are the most wonderful words in the
world, both to speak and to hear.
The look he had so rarely seen was there now, and there was no care to
hide what was in her eyes, for she had told him all, without a word, as
women can.
"I have loved you very long," he said again, and with one hand he
pressed back her hair and smoothed it.
"I know it," she answered, gazing at him with lips just parted. "But I
have loved you longer still."
"How could I guess it?" he asked. "It seems so wonderful, so very
strange!"
"I could not say it first." She smiled. "And yet I tried to tell you
without words."
"Did you?"
She nodded as her head lay in his arm, and closed her smiling lips
tightly, and nodded again.
"You would not understand," she said. "You always made it hard for me."
"Oh, if I had only known!"
She lay quietly on his arm for a few seconds, and neither spoke. Only
the low roar of the furnace was heard in the hot stillness. Marietta
looked up steadily into his face, with unwinking eyes.
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