But, as she made this last confession, she threw her arms about his neck and drooped her head against his bosom.
"Oh, if you only felt to me like I do to you!" she sobbed.
No man can hear without some return of emotion a confession from a woman's lips that she loves him.

Harriet was the only girl whom Julian had ever approached in familiar intercourse; she had no rival to fear amongst living women; the one rival to be dreaded was altogether out of the sphere of her conceptions,--the ideal love of a poet's heart and brain.

But the ideal is often least present to us when most needed.
Here was love; offer but love to a poet, and does he pause to gauge its quality?
The sudden whirl of conflicting emotions left Julian at the mercy of the instant's impulse.

She was weak; she was suffering through him; she loved him.
"Be my wife, then," he whispered, returning her embrace, "and let me guard you from all who would do you harm." She uttered a cry of delight, and the cry was a true one..