The immediate future looked bright to her, since they
were to meet every day, and after that, "something" would happen. If
nothing did, and they had to face trouble again, they would meet it
bravely. That was all any one could do in life. She had found
happiness too suddenly after an unhappy childhood, to dream of letting
it go, cost what it might to keep it.
But she saw how grave he looked and the hopeless expression in his
loving eyes, as he turned them to her.
"Why are you sad?" she asked, smiling, and laying her hand on his. "We
can be happy in the present. We love each other, and can meet often.
You have made a great discovery and are much more famous than you were
a few days ago. A newspaper has told our story, it is true, but there
was not a word against either of us in it, for I made them let me read
it myself. And now people will say that we are engaged to be married,
and that we got into a foolish scrape and were nearly killed together,
and that we are a very romantic couple, like lovers in a book! Every
girl I know wishes she were in my place, I am sure, and half the men
in Rome wish that they could have saved some girl's life as you did
mine. What is there so very dreadful in all that? What is there to cry
about--dear?"
Half in banter, half in earnest, she spoke to him as if he were a
child compared with her, and leaned affectionately towards him; and
the last word, the word neither of them had spoken yet, came so softly
and sweetly to him on her breath, that he caught his own, and turned a
little pale; and the barriers broke all at once, and he kissed her.
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