"It has been so long--I have lived in prison and in fetters--and it has been so long!" Even as my Lord Dunstanwolde had found cause to wonder at her gentle ways, so was this man amazed at her great sweetness, now that he might cross the threshold of her heart.

She gave of herself as an empress might give of her store of imperial jewels, with sumptuous lavishness, knowing that the store could not fail.

In truth, it seemed that it must be a dream that she so stood before him in all her great, rich loveliness, leaning against his heaving breast, her arms as tender as his own, her regal head thrown backward that they might gaze into the depths of each other's eyes.
"From that first hour that I looked up at you," she said, "I knew you were my lord--my lord! And a fierce pain stabbed my heart, knowing you had come too late by but one hour; for had it not been that Dunstanwolde had led me to you, I knew--ah! how well I knew--that our hearts would have beaten together not as two hearts but as one." "As they do now," he cried.
"As they do now," she answered--"as they do now!" "And from the moment that your rose fell at my feet and I raised it in my hand," he said, "I knew I held some rapture which was my own.

And when you stood before me at Dunstanwolde's side and our eyes met, I could not understand--nay, I could scarce believe that it had been taken from me." There, in her arms, among the flowers and in the sweetness of the sun, he lived again the past, telling her of the days when, knowing his danger, he had held himself aloof, declining to come to her lord's house with the familiarity of a kinsman, because the pang of seeing her often was too great to bear; and relating to her also the story of the hours when he had watched her and she had not known his nearness or guessed his pain, when she had passed in her equipage, not seeing him, or giving him but a gracious smile.

He had walked outside her window at midnight sometimes, too, coming because he was a despairing man, and could not sleep, and returning homeward, having found no rest, but only increase of anguish.
"Sometimes," he said, "I dared not look into your eyes, fearing my own would betray me; but now I can gaze into your soul itself, for the midnight is over--and joy cometh with the morning." As he had spoken, he had caressed softly with his hand her cheek and her crown of hair, and such was his great gentleness that 'twas as if he touched lovingly a child; for into her face there had come that look which it would seem that in the arms of the man she loves every true woman wears--a look which is somehow like a child's in its trusting, sweet surrender and appeal, whatsoever may be her stateliness and the splendour of her beauty.
Yet as he touched her cheek so and her eyes so dwelt on him, suddenly her head fell heavily upon his breast, hiding her face, even while her unwreathing arms held more closely.
"Oh! those mad days before!" she cried--"Oh! those mad, mad days before!" "Nay, they are long passed, sweet," he said, in his deep, noble voice, thinking that she spoke of the wildness of her girlish years--"and all our days of joy are yet to come." "Yes, yes," she cried, clinging closer, yet with shuddering, "they were _before_--the joy--the joy is all to come.".