“I can’t make up my mind to it.  And I suppose the reason is that it means so much to me—­that you mean so much to me.  What is the use of my dodging the truth, Selma—­seeking to conceal it because such a short time has elapsed since you ceased to be a wife?  Forgive me if I hurt you, if it seem indelicate to speak of love at the very moment when you are happy in your liberty.  I can’t help it; it’s my nature to speak openly.  And there’s no bar now.  The fact that you are free makes clear to me what I have not dared to countenance before, that you are the one woman in the world for me—­the woman I have dreamed of—­and longed to meet—­the woman whose influence has blessed me already, and without whom I shall lack the greatest happiness which life can give.  Selma, I love you—­I adore you.”

Selma listened with greedy ears, which she could scarcely believe.  It seemed to her that she was in dream-land, so unexpected, yet entrancing, was his avowal.  She had been vaguely aware that he admired her more than he had allowed himself to disclose, and conscious, too, that his presence was agreeable to her; but in an instant now she recognized that this was love—­the love she had sought, the love she had yearned to inspire and to feel.  Compared with it, Babcock’s clumsy ecstasy and her own sufferance of it had been a sham and a delusion.  Of so much she was conscious in a twinkling, and yet what she deemed proper self-respect restrained her from casting herself into his arms.  It was, indeed, soon, and she had been happy in her liberty.  At least, she had supposed herself so; and she owed it to her own plans and hopes not to act hastily, though she knew what she intended to do.  She had been lonely, yes starving, for lack of true companionship, and here was the soul which would be a true mate to hers.

They were sitting on a grassy bank.  He was bending toward her with clasped hands, a picture of fervor.  She could see him out of the corner of her glance, though she looked into space with her gaze of seraphic worry.  Yet her lips were ready to lend themselves to a smile of blissful satisfaction and her eyes to fill with the melting mood of the thought that at last happiness had come to her.

The silence was very brief, but Littleton, as would have seemed fitting to her, feared lest she were shocked.

“I distress you,” he said.  “Forgive me.  Listen—­will you listen?” Selma was glad to listen.  The words of love, such love as this, were delicious, and she felt she owed it to herself not to be won too easily.  “I am listening,” she answered softly with the voice of one face to face with an array of doubts.