How on earth was he ever to move, he wondered vaguely, if the slightest motion meant the withdrawing of that fold.

He looked at her hand, resting so near, so near, upon the arm of the chair; and last he looked again into her face; and it seemed wonderful and before all things wonderful, not that she should be here, jeweled and crowned, but that he should so unbelievably be here with her.
And yet it might be but a moment, as time is measured, until this moment would be swept away.

His eyes met hers and held them.
"Would you mind," he said, "now--just for a little, while we wait here--not asking me that?
Not asking me anything?
There will be time enough in there--when _they_ ask me.

Just for now I only want to think how wonderful this is." She said: "Yes, it is wonderful--unbelievable," but he thought that she might have meant the white room or her queen's robe or any one of all the things which he did not mean.
"_Is_ it wonderful to you ?" he asked, and he said again: "I wish--I wish I knew!" He looked at her, sitting in the moon of her laces and the stars of her gems, and the sense of the immeasurableness of the hour came upon him as it comes to few; the knowledge that the evanescent moment is very potent, the world where the siren light of the Remote may at any moment lie quenched in some ashen present.

To him, held momentarily in this place that was like shoreless, open water, the present was inestimably precious and it lay upon St.George like the delicate claim of his love itself.