Let me hear those sweet lips say so.

Promise me, promise me, my darling, that you will be my wife." He caught and clasped her close, and she did not repulse him.
"I dare not, Richard--I dare not promise you," she murmured.
"But if your father gives me leave ?" whispered he, his lips to her warm cheek.
She uttered a soft cry of passionate joy that told him more than a hundred phrases of assent how dear he was to her, and hid her face upon his breast.
Oh happy hour, so bright, and yet so brief! Oh golden noon, already on the verge of eve and blackest night! How often in the after-time did that fair and sunny scene recur to them, a bitter memory; how often was that first kiss of love renewed by cruel fancy and in mocking dreams, its sweetness changed to gall! Better for one--better, perhaps, for both--if, clasped in one another's arms, they had fallen from that tall tower's top, and then and there had ended life and love together!.