'Yesterday.'
'You saw him?'
'Yes. At our house. He came to see us.'
'Gemma? Then you love me?'
She turned to him.
'Should ... I have come here, if not?' she whispered, and both her hands fell on the seat.
Sanin snatched those powerless, upturned palms, and pressed them to his eyes, to his lips.... Now the veil was lifted of which he had dreamed the night before! Here was happiness, here was its radiant form!
He raised his head, and looked at Gemma, boldly and directly. She, too, looked at him, a little downwards. Her half-shut eyes faintly glistened, dim with light, blissful tears. Her face was not smiling ... no! it laughed, with a blissful, noiseless laugh.
He tried to draw her to him, but she drew back, and never ceasing to laugh the same noiseless laugh, shook her head. 'Wait a little,' her happy eyes seemed to say.
'O Gemma!' cried Sanin: 'I never dreamed that you would love me!'
'I did not expect this myself,' Gemma said softly.
'How could I ever have dreamed,' Sanin went on, 'when I came to Frankfort, where I only expected to remain a few hours, that I should find here the happiness of all my life!'
'All your life? Really?' queried Gemma.
'All my life, for ever and ever!' cried Sanin with fresh ardour.
The gardener's spade suddenly scraped two paces from where they were sitting.
'Let's go home,' whispered Gemma: 'we'll go together--will you?'
If she had said to him at that instant 'Throw yourself in the sea, will you?' he would have been flying headlong into the ocean before she had uttered the last word.
They went together out of the garden and turned homewards, not by the streets of the town, but through the outskirts.