s he could have
restrained himself, the option was not his. She turned in the act, and
saw him; with a startled cry she put--none too soon--the table between
them.

They faced one another across it, he flushed, eager, with love in his
eyes, and on his lips; she blushing but not ashamed, her new-found joy
in her eyes, and in the pose of her head.

"Anne!" he cried. "I know now! I know! I have seen and you cannot
deceive me!"

"In what?" she said, a smile trembling on her lips. "And of what, Messer
Claude, are you so certain, if you please?"

"That you love me!" he replied. "But not a hundredth part"--he stretched
his arms across the table towards her "as much as I love you and have
loved you for weeks! As I loved you even before I learned last
night----"

"What?" Into her face--that had not found one hard look to rebuke his
boldness--came something of her old silent, watchful self. "What did you
learn last night?"

"Your secret!"

"I have none!" Quick as thought the words came from her lips. "I have
none! God is merciful," with a gesture of her open arms, as if she put
something from her, "and it is gone! If you know, if you guess aught of
what it was"--her eyes questioned his and read in them if not that which
he knew, that which he thought of her.

"I ask you to be silent."

"I will, after I have----"

"Now! Always!"

"Not till I have spoken once!" he cried. "Not till I have told you once
what I think of you! Last night I heard. And I understood. I saw what
you had gone through, what you had feared, what had been your life all
these weeks, rising and lying down! I saw what you meant when you bade
me go anywhere but here, and why you suffered what you did at their
hands, and why they dared to treat you--so! And had they been here I
would have killed them!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "And had you been
here----"

"Yes?" she did not seek to check him now. Her bearing was changed, her
eyes, soft and tender, met his as no eyes had ever met his.

"I should have worshipped you! I should have knelt as I kneel now!" he
cried. And sinking on his knees he extended his arms across the table
and took her unresisting hands. "If you no longer have a secret, you
had one, and I bless God for it! For without it I might not have known
you, Anne! I might not have----"

"Perhaps you do not know me now," she said; but she did not withdraw her
hands or her eyes. Only into the latter grew a shade of trouble. "I have
don