Ah, but you know! What is your answer?
Have you thought--you promised me you would think ?" "I have thought," she said, at last.

"I have thought of nothing else--I wanted to tell you the truth--to tell you truly as I would to myself--but it is so hard to know--Sometimes when I think that you may go away, and that I may not see you again, my heart sinks, and I feel, oh! so wretched." He waited for no more, but caught her to him, and as she lay in his arms only slightly struggling, her face upturned, he bent his own, almost white with passion, and kissed her on the lips, and not once only.
The blood rushed to her face, her bosom rose and fell, and, her face grown pale again, her eyes gazed up into his half fiercely, half appealingly; then suddenly they grew moist, as if with tears, her lips quivered, and from them came, as if involuntarily, the words of surrender, the maiden confession: "I love you!" He uttered a low, sharp cry, the expression of his heart's delight, his soul's triumph.
"You love me! Ida! How--how do you know--when ?" She shook her head and sighed, as she pressed her cheek against his breast.
"I don't know.

It was just now--the moment when you kissed me.

Then it came to me suddenly--the knowledge--the truth.

It was as if a flash of light had revealed it to me.