It was delicious to him to be catechised, questioned, explored by
Maud, to have his reserve broken through and his reticence
disregarded; but what oftenest brought the great fact of his love
home to him with an overpowering certainty of joy was the girl's
eager caresses and endearing gestures. Howard had always curiously
shrunk from physical contact with his fellows; he had an almost
childishly observant eye, and his senses were abnormally alert;
little bodily defects and uglinesses had been a horror to him; and
the way in which Maud would seek his embrace, clasp his hand, lay
her cheek to his, as if nestling home, gave him an enraptured sense
of delight that transcended all experience. He was at first in
these talks very tender of what he imagined her to believe; but he
found that this did not in the least satisfy her, and he gradually
opened his mind more and more to her fearless view.
"Are you certain of nothing?" she asked him one day, half
mirthfully.
"Yes, of one thing," he said, "of YOU! You are the only real and
perfect thing and thought in the world to me--I have always been
alone hitherto," he added, "and you have come near to me out of the
deep--a shining spirit!"
Howard never tired of questioning her in these days as to how her
love for him had arisen.
"That is the mystery of mysteries!" he said to her once; "what was
it in me or about me to make you care?"
Maud laughed. "Why, you might as well ask a man at a shop," she
said, "which particular coin it was that induced him to part with
his wares--it's just the price! Why, I cared for you, I think,
before I ever saw you, before I ever heard of you; one thinks--I
suppose everyone thinks--that there must be one person in the world
who is waiting for one--and it seems to me now as if I had always
known it was you; and then Jack talked about you, and then you
came; and that was enough, though I didn't dare to think you could
care for me; and then how miserable I was when you began by seeming
to take an interest in me, and then it all drifted away, and I
could do nothing to hold it.
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