"Darling!" he interrupted, and began to kiss me again, and that gave me such feeling I could not collect my thoughts to go on with what I was saying for a few minutes. We both were rather silly, if it is silly to be madly, wildly happy, and oblivious of everything else.
"I will go straight to Aunt Sophia now, when I take you back to Claridge's," he said, presently, when we had got a little calmer.
I wonder what kisses do that it makes one have that perfectly lovely sensation down the back, just like certain music does, only much, much more so. I thought they would be dreadful things when it was a question of Christopher, but Robert! Oh, well, as I said before, I can't think of any other heaven.
"What time is it?" I had sense enough to ask presently.
He lit a match and looked at his watch.
"Ten minutes past five," he exclaimed.
"And Christopher was coming about four," I said; "and if you had not chanced to meet me in the park by now I should have been engaged to him, and probably trying to bear his kissing me."
"My God!" said Robert, fiercely; "it makes me rave to think of it," and he held me so tight for a moment I could hardly breathe.
"You won't have any one else's kisses ever again in this world, and that I tell you," he said, through his teeth.
"I--I don't want them," I whispered creeping closer to him. "And I never have had any, never any one but you, Robert."
"Darling," he said, "how that pleases me!"
Of course, if I wanted to I could go on writing pages and pages of all the lovely things we said to each other, but it would sound, even to read to myself, such nonsense that I can't, and I couldn't make the tone of Robert's voice, or the exquisite fascination of his ways--tender, and adoring, and masterful. It must all stay in my heart, but oh! it is as if a fairy with a wand had passed and said "bloom" to a winter tree. Numbers of emotions that I had never dreamed about were surging through me--the floodgates of everything in my soul seemed opening in one rush of love and joy. While we were together nothing appeared to matter, all barriers melted away.
Fate would be sure to be kind to lovers like us.
We got back to Claridge's about six, and Robert would not let me go up to my sitting-room until he had found out if Christopher had gone.