But there had been something sweeter than such protestation in the question she had asked him.

"Is it indeed true," she had said, "that I have been placed there where all my joy and all my glory lies ?" It was not in her to tell a lie to him, even by a tone.

She had intended to say nothing of her love, but he knew that it had all been told.

"Have I ?"--he repeated the words to himself a dozen times, and as he did so, he could hear her voice.

Certainly there never was a voice that brought home to the hearer so strong a sense of its own truth! Why should he not at once make up his mind to marry her?
He could do it.