She heard him in amazement, scarcely believing that she heard. "Do you--can you mean--" she faltered, "that--it really--doesn't count?"
"I mean that it is less than nothing to me," he made answer, and in his eyes as they looked into hers was that glory of worship that she had once seen in a dream. "I mean, my darling, that since you want me as I want you, nothing--nothing in the world--can ever come between us any more. Oh, my dear, my dear, I wish you'd told me sooner."
"I knew I ought to," she murmured, still hardly believing. "And yet--somehow--I couldn't bear the thought of your knowing,--particularly as--as--till Eustace told me--I never dreamed you--cared. You are so--great. You ought to have someone so much--better than I. I'm not nearly good enough--not nearly."
He was drawing her to him, and she went with a little sob into his arms; but she turned her face away over his shoulder, avoiding his.
"I ought not--to have told you--I loved you," she said brokenly. "It wasn't right of me. Only--when I saw you so unhappy--I couldn't--somehow--keep it in any longer. Dear Scott, don't you think--before--before we go any further--you had better--forget it and--give me up?"
"No, I don't think so." Scott spoke very softly, with the utmost tenderness, into her ear. "Don't you realize," he said, "that we belong to each other? Could there possibly be anyone else for either you or me?"
She did not answer him; only she clung a little closer. And, after a moment, as she felt the drawing of his hold, "Don't kiss me---yet!" she begged him tremulously. "Let us wait till--the morning!"
His arms relaxed, "It is very near the morning now," he said. "Shall we go and watch for it?"
They rose together. Dinah's eyes sought his for one shy, fleeting second, falling instantly as if half-dazzled, half-afraid. He took her hand and led her quietly from the room.
It was no longer dark in the passage outside. A pearly light was growing. The splash of the sea sounded very far below them, as the dim surging of a world unseen might rise to the watchers on the mountain-top.
They moved to an open window at the end of the passage. No sound came from Isabel's room close by, and after a few seconds Scott turned noiselessly aside and entered.
Dinah remained at the open window waiting with a throbbing heart in the great silence that wrapped the world. She was not afraid, but she longed for Scott to come back; she was conscious of an urgent need of him.