It does not scare me now."
"In all my life I have kissed you only once," I said.
The rose deepened, and in her eyes there was laughter, with tears
behind. "You are a gentleman of determination," she said. "If you
are bent upon having your way, I do not know that I - that I - can
help myself. I do not even know that I want to help myself."
Outside the wind blew and the sun shone, and the laughter from
below the fort was too far away and elfin to jar upon us. The world
forgot us, and we were well content. There seemed not much to
say: I suppose we were too happy for words. I knelt beside her, and
she laid her hands in mine, and now and then we spoke. In her
short and lonely life, and in my longer stern and crowded one,
there had been little tenderness, little happiness. In her past, to
those about her, she had seemed bright and gay; I had been a
comrade whom men liked because I could jest as well as fight.
Now we were happy, but we were not gay. Each felt for the other a
great compassion; each knew that though we smiled to-day, the
groan and the tear might be to-morrow's due; the sunshine around
us was pure gold, but that the clouds were mounting we knew full
well.
"I must soon be gone," she said at last. "It is a stolen meeting. I do
not know when we shall meet again."
She rose from the settle, and I rose with her, and we stood together
beside the barred window.
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